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Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
You can feel it spinning
                                         fast
the Chinese, Japanese, American and European junk
orbiting at several thousand miles per hour could
                                                           ­                             punch
a hole in your armor, future. Thanksgiving passes, then Christmas.
A nuclear detonation, we absorb that fact. The scientist in us
delays sadness by recording observations. What is is,
sorrow's for tomorrow.

By reducing probabilities to near zero I hope to avoid sorrow.
In yr suburb.
In history when there were many fewer people we still found reason
to cross space, explore, trade and war. Now
                                                             ­                 overpopulation
may not be the problem but food and water shortages
get our attention.
                              I have Korf's fears.
And hear what I want to hear.

Some hear singing, some hear speeches or complaining.
Martin Luther King sang his complaints, dreamed of a brotherly nation
which came to pass, spinning fast, past Thanksgivings, past jailings
into reconnaissance, small wars, drones, renaissance, inventions.
At the border,
                         where the Juaristas fought Maximilian:
Benito Juarez (1806-1872) Zapotec Amerindian who served five terms as president of Mexico. He was the first Mexican leader who did not have a military background and also the first full-blooded indigenous person to lead a country in the western hemisphere in over 300 years. For resisting French occupation, overthrowing the Empire, and restoring the Republic, Juarez is regarded as Mexicoxs greatest and most beloved leader. 

Each soldier chooses what war at what border, or just
                                                            ­                                   shows up
spinning with the planet.
The neighborhood and surrounding nature is orderly.
But always there is implied force, violence holding it together,
                                                       ­                                                       chaos
is contained
kept out of the playground, government buildings, childrenxs games
but lies within
the force maintaining order, a spinning tumor, a gyroscope of
                                                              ­                                                inertia.
The force of the spinning, the speed of the force bring one to one's
      death
seasons, weather, earth.
                                         While the emperor's being beheaded
enduring seeds are discovered and invented, cross-fertilized and bred.
Corn, yams, potatoes, sunflowers, rice.
                                                           ­       Food is life and a good study,
useful discipline
                           daily meditation.
                                                     ­   The fighting man protects the farmer
and the farmer feeds the fighting man.
They elect the governor
                                        who serves the people. Peace out.

Peace and war are transitory manifestations of spinning
electrons, planets.
                               The sun's a nuclear detonation, essential
to spring and planting. Food is life. Seeds endure
if man goes to his daily discipline. If woman is man.
Birth and death
                           together are orderly, the border can be known,
voluntarily. How we live together, by prayer or force,
is our story.

Knowledge
from laboratory to starry corridor keeps us very
                                                            ­                         versed.
Did Juaristas consider the rights of animals not to be eaten?
Not during that spinning.
                                              And perform the history that surrounds us.
All that can be done
is written in the spinning:
"The people of the land, the Indian farmers of North America - like their counterparts in Mesoamerica, the Andean region, and the Amazon - have continuously cultivated maize, beans, squash and other crops for more than five thousand years. One of the salient features of their traditional farming systems is the high degree of biodiversity. These traditional farming systems have emerged over centuries of cultural and biological evolution, and they represent the accumulated experience of indigenous farmers interacting with the environment without access to external inputs, capital or scientific knowledge. In Latin America alone, more than 2.5 million hectares under traditional agriculture in the form of raised fields, polycultures, agroforestry systems and the like document indigenous farmers' successful adaptations to difficult environments."
--Wikipedia,  "Benito Juarez"
-- Altieri , Miguel A., Foreword to Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation, by Gary Paul Nabhan, The University of Arizona Press, 1989

www.ronnowpoetry.com
Rob Sandman May 2016
Playin' games.
=============
Jay Text Sandman aka Skitz Text

Set the timer click click now the clock is tick tockin'.
I came to play the game. Like a KNIK KNAK knockin'.
Your rhyme flow is slow you know like PLAYDOUGH.
I gobble up fine rhymes like a HUNGRY HIPPO.
Like SUBBUTEO I kick it.
Shruggin' off your challenge like BUCKAROO kickin'..
..up ****. I sunk your BATTLESHIP.
You played out your game of CHARADES. That's it.
I dig deep in me rhyme dictionary.
You scrawl on the the wall like palsy PICTIONARY.
Not strugglin'. I'm jugglin' the rhymes in me head.
Slam dunk. KERPLUNK. Nuff said.
No, never. No way. Who am I kiddin'?
You know I got the rhymes. And I got the rhythm.
I confess. Like a game of CHESS.
Checkmate. No debate. Not a pretty pawn missin'. *  

It’s the end of the games like RIP,
I Multikill MC’s like COD,
Keep your mind on your MINECRAFT can’t catch me,
Cause Skitz is EC's Artillery,
droppin bombs watch the FALLOUT or you’re Dogmeat
FAR CRY from the old days of CRT
So your attempt is DOOMed best clear the room,
SWAT’s get Swatted Mic shotgun BOOM!,
Blast backdraft will destroy your CIV,
No cheat codes PAC em up MAN time to give,
RESPEC- to the PORTAL gun hangin’ on me hip,
You’ve got HALF a LIFE left faster than NO CLIP
But I said no cheatin’ Hackers get Hacked up,
No Multiplayer,cause you’ve no backup,
I’m glorying in the games we play,
Checkmate VS XBOX  pass to Jay.


Chorus
Not mentionin' names. We're playin' games.
Energetic and poetic and it's Jay to blame.
Set the mic aflame. We burn it up now.
Set the timer click, click.  

When I flex it's hectic. Like SCALEXTRIC.
Switch lanes to PERFECTION.
I've a MONOPOLY in this game.
Don't pass go. Go straight to jail.
You fall like DOMINOES. I leap like a salmon.
Tisk tisk. Big RISK. Now I have BACKGAMMON.
Stamina. A steady hand OPERATION.
Ace up me sleeve and I'm just playin' PATIENCE.
Got me POKERface on.
Read 'em and weep as the game plays on.
I got a dead mans hand but I animate the mic.
BULLDOGS charge. You know I'll reach the other side.
Back to me den.
Repeat after me like SIMON SAYS.
RED ROVER, RED ROVER. I call Jay over.
You think it's over ?
No my friend. *  

Not mentionin' names. We're playin' games.
Energetic and poetic Schizophrenic to blame.
Set the mic aflame. We burn it up now.
Set the timer click, click.  

This Steam Machine is heatin' up a treat
So don’t be TEKKEN the ****,just feel the beat,
This KOMBAT’s MORTAL to enemies,
But it’s a full HEALTH PACK to Fans of E.C.,
So OverClock your CPU,
get your Soundcard Jumpin like chimps in SIM ZOO,
drop DICE on ICE from here to Timbuktoo,
STREET FIGHTER’s and Writers BIOSHOCKin' you


Not mentionin' names. We're playin' games.
Energetic and poetic Schizophrenic to blame.
Set the mic aflame. We burn it up now.
Set the timer click, click.  

I SPY with my little eye.
Somethin' beginnin' with J. I let fly.
As your JENGA tower wobbles.
I smile. You drop tiles. Dropped your poxy box of SCRABBLE.
Look out. That could spell disaster.
Triple word score as the rhymes rip past ya. Blast ya.
Quick out the trap like The Flash playin' SNAP.
Check the lyrical master. *
As the Dungeon Dragon spreads his wings-lets fly
playin' the game the pied piper pies,
catch you rats in me MOUSETRAP its a snap,
"cause I wrote the rhymes that broke the bulls back"
I'm the KING OF THE HILL I got ya QUICKSCOPIN'
in THE SHADOWS OF MORDOR prayin' and hopin'
for a hero like MARIO to bust you loose,
Jay's SNAKE'n' up the LADDER time to twist the noose


Not mentionin' names. We're playin' games.
Energetic and poetic E.C. to blame.
Set the mic aflame. We burn it up now.
Set the timer click, click.  

What ya think ?              
Me rhymes kink, bend and fold like TWISTER.
A wicked rhythm like DOUBLE DUTCH. Skip, skip.
Like EVEL KNIEVEL. Flywheel spinnin'.
Rev it up. Dump the clutch.        
See me grinnin'. Knockin' down the pin and..
SPIROGRAPH lines in me rhyme. I'm spinnin..
..out of control. You can't cope with me GYROSCOPE.
I bring you back to the beginnin'.*

Not mentionin' names. We're playin' games.
Energetic and poetic E.C. to blame.
Set the mic aflame. We burn it up now.
Set the timer click, click.
Jay came up with this idea and tried to mention as many games we played as kids as he could fit in,when  he invited me onto the track I went more down the PC/Console game route,
let us know how many we missed!.
Chris Saitta Feb 2022
A sigh is a barebacked rider, soundless along a sandy coast,
A candle tipped with starlight, wheeling in a cosmos of smoke,  
A firefly floating on the ruins of the wind like a winged gyroscope,
A skull in the stomach whose teeth are my own and breathes
With Babel’s thousand tongues telling fragrant untruths.
Francie Lynch Nov 2016
BeforeTV

Before TV,
When we were together,
Before growing apart
From father and mother,
We entertained ourselves with song;
All the sisters and brothers.

We gambolled in the backyard,
The clothes line was our zip line,
We fell soft, then hard.

We somehow got a hold of skates,
Not knowing what they're for,
So we took turns,
Laced them on,
To skate on cement floors.

We raised a high jump,
Skipped on the driveway,
Double Dutch and Speed;
We strung a line for volleyball,
Nailed a hoop below the roof,
Played soccer in the hall.
We paddled ping-pong on the table;
Our household freedom
Made us as grateful
As animals in a well-kept stable.

Some winters we'd flood the back,
And shoot and slide until the cracks
Turned to puddles,
Then I'd sail popsiclestick boats
Over oceans,
To distant folks.

On the frontwalk we tossed our stones,
Landing on the moon,
And hopscotch til we went for soup
And soda bread and **** milk.

If we had a ball and bat,
Chances are we'd not come back
'til the sun went down;
And then,
When the stars came out,
We'd *Hide and Seek,

Til the last one'd shout,  Home Free.
With dirt and patchwork dungarees,
We went in
For good-night tea.

Weren't we the normal family?

Then we got our first T.V.

After T.V.

We were landed,
Not gentry,
And we started channelling
U.S. T.V.

We weren't polite like Cartwrights,
Nor guaranteed Lil' Joe's birthright.

The sisters locked on Patty Duke,
Then dressed the same
To get the look,
So they ditched their Wellie boots.


We'd lie on the floor,
Stuck like glue,
On Sundays watch Ed's Big Shoe.
We didn't know the sun had left,
Our eyes were on the TV set.

The Cleaver boys still got dessert,
Though leaving green beans on their plate,
Left ice-cream and sweet chocolate cake.
We'd stare confused, yet salivate;
Such treats and food we'd never waste.

The Douglas boys had single beds,
En suites, bathrobes,
Hair on their heads;
Pillows and open windows,
And locks on doors,
They weren't co-ed.
We slept, at least, two to a bed,
Four to a room, two bedspreads.
We slept on mattresses with stinging springs,
Torn and traced with stale *****.
In the hot and humid summer,
In bathing suits
We'd swim in slumber.
Our small window couldn't open,
We roasted in our four walled oven.

We watched Lassie and Gomer Pyle,
Green Acres' Arnold had us beguiled.
We didn't get Father Knows Best,
His gentleness raised our regrets.
Lucy and Ricky, an odd couple,
Were always getting into trouble,
Like Fred and best bud, Barney Rubble.

Were these the models to emulate,
To blend in North of the United States?

These families had open conversations,
Shared their thoughts without hesitation.
Mine were full of consternation,
And alien, like My Favourite Martian.

We grew in a foreign land,
Beached like the cast on Gilligan.

Surely, we were Lost in Space,
Separate from the human race.
No gyroscope to set direction,
To separate fact from fiction.

We weren't stupid,
We were astute;
We weren't the ones on our TV.
We were a singular family.

Post T.V.

We numbered ten at the start,
Then aged and drifted far apart;
We can't gather to watch TV,
As we were once wont to be.
But I remember Ernest T.,
Throwing rocks to win Charlene,
And arrested by Sheriff Andy.
We laughed at all the silly doings
Of Barney, and Thelma Lou's wooings.

I send e-mails and textual banter,
(One brother still likes writing letters),
Reminding me of our early days,
How TV censured our innocent ways.

We never were small screen.
We emigrated to Canada from Ireland in 1957. A brave new world.
Evan Backward Apr 2012
from the inside
I look out of,
the frosted windows 
of my eyes

I'm swimming 
in my own skin.
in the same way one 
might swim in a shirt 
three sizes too large

I'm cold but, 
I don't seem to care. 
actually I do, 
it sparks curiosity in me,
my own discomfort
comforts me

I'm more interested 
in the sensation of the smooth glass
underneath my fingertips 
than the discussion around me

I'm calm. movement 
makes me sad.
I'm content just not moving,
my back bent and 
frozen against the cold metal 
of the locker,
my foot falling asleep 
from the awkward bend of my leg,
my *** quickly losing 
sensation, unnerves me

I'm not happy and
I don't know why.
I'm disconnected from the world 
but I have not retreated into a fantasy.
still half asleep 
but not yet dreaming.
an observer to my own body, 
my sensations and the world around me
Paul Rousseau Jun 2012
Dean and I loitered on iron horseback
Flaked with nuances and peppered with a keen stutter
Our jokes had weight
Weight creates a gravitational pull
Our jokes had a gravitational pull
My clone emerged in the rearview mirror with his girlfriend
Dean and I thought that was funny
They were attracted to us, for once
We got a bite to eat, my head, like a gyroscope
Universal karma
Revolving, self-stabilization
Into the palm of reconciliation
Forced by nature
With interdependence
A means to measure
And counter each sentence
James Gable Jun 2016
Your bow is all elbow,
a flank of forearm that is
supporting and simply cradling
my imagination
where a dozen or so
lifeboats hang off starboard
in case things get too much

I, captained by your sturdy arms,
nip up to the crow’s nest
for a sip of spiced ***
for a bit of warmth and
perhaps more—

a full beard that reminds
me so much of Darwin
I feel certain I am on the Beagle
and hungry to shoot some
lame birds one by one!

Your shoulder
where I can sleep forever—
come sharks and eat my catch
while I whisper poetry,
summon ghosts and
******* Hemingway,
whose macho act was betrayed
by his pain-filled eyes
and sensitively painted
one-word skies

You, my aching hull
in human form,
rocking gently as the sea
slows our progress
knowing we are
wishing away time too often

the working of the gyro
prevents my seasick blushes
we do not yet know each other
that well but all is fine as I see it,
your arms really are made of
shipworthy wood and
beneath deck, where I will sleep
tonight above Atlantis’s cesspit,
we just bounce off each wave,
getting closer and closer to the moon
but not yet arrived,
has sleep come too soon for me tonight?

I’ll rest and stretch and groan
like weary ****** do
once Surya helps me turn out the light




*—Yes, once my ship did start to sink. I called until my throat was gone and ended up swimming a good distance until crucially a boat came by and pulled me out of the sea. I remember thinking: I should feel more grateful to be alive. I went back to where it sank and retrieved a few personal items, then I sat on the beach a wept as if the whole thing had just hit me.
Part Six of The Man Who Longed to be an Oyster (see collections)
Brian Oarr Jun 2012
I endured spiritual time dilation in life's stasis field,
held to a course you unwittingly set for us 40 years ago.
Back then, I knew instictively you were my beacon,
never doubted I should follow blindly, without question,
even when I lost sight and only drifted the cosmos,
always the gyroscope spinning in my head
whispered, She's still out there, leading.

So, I absorbed whatever light filtered in,
performing some manner of karmic photosynthesis,
noxious vapors escaping, replaced by vital oxygen,
a mere algae amongst humanities' phytoplankton.
And when the time-space coordinates aligned,
you re-materialized, as you'd always been there,
my sister, my spirit-guide, my love.
me grandad was a ******
he had an old ships gyroscope
that he would spin up
and set in the palm
of his open hand
dis ere has seen every dock
an point inbetween
dis world has to find
he would say
a mantra maybe
then he would sit it upon
the tip of my trembling
outstretched finger
holding my wrist
proving his point
steeling the tremble
balance in all things
he would say
to my mesmerised
widened whitened
crying out to be wisened eyes
and let go

balance

then he would set it atilt
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Just watching raindrops slapping leaves
is better than anything requiring electricity
including fame and posterity. Monday
morning I walk over to the art museum
stand before Homer. I'm imagining
life in ancient Greece, the land largely
deforested to build a navy, white as bone,
a tourist attraction. The sea too being
denuded of its fish, super-efficient fishery
fleets, and every human wanting a healthy
dose of omega 3. O my God, omega!

the 24th and last letter of his alphabet,
which means great and has a value of 800,
often used to denote the last, the end, the
ultimate limit of a set, as in I am the alpha
and the omega
(which was omitted
from the oldest manuscripts). In physics,
ohm is a unit of electrical resistance,
in chemistry, oxygen-18, a stable isotope,
in statistical mechanics, it represents multiplicity
(the number of microstates) in a system.
In astronomy, the density of the universe
(density parameter), the ranking of a star’s
brightness in a constellation, and the orbital
elements: the longitude of the ascending node
and the designation of the argument
of periapsis of an orbit.

Also the solid angle or rate of precession
in a gyroscope. In particle physics,
omega baryons. In complex analysis,
the Omega constant, a solution to Lambert's
W-function. In calculus, a variable
for a 2-dimensional region, usually
corresponding to the domain of a double
integral. In topos theory, the codomain
of the subobject classifier of an elementary
space. In combinatory logic,
the looping combinator. In group theory,
the omega and agemo subgroups of a p-group.
In Big O notation, the asymptotic behavior
of functions. Chaitin's uncomputable constant.

Omega watches, badge of the Supreme Court,
last mission of the Space Shuttle program,
God of War, Heroes of Olympus, Pokemon's
Omega Ruby, Sonic the Hedgehog's E-123.
Symbol of resistance to the Vietnam War draft.
Year of date of death. Lowest-ranked wolf.

In molecular biology, a two-point crossover.
The lower case omega denotes the carbon atom
furthest from the carboxyl group of a fatty acid.
One of the RNA polymerase subunits.
The dihedral angle associated with the peptide group.
A measure of evolution at the protein level.
In dynamics, angular velocity or angular frequency.
In computational fluid dynamics, the specific
turbulence dissipation rate. In meteorology,
the Lagrangian time rate of change of pressure
for a parcel of air. Natural frequency
in circuit analysis and signal processing.
The omega meson.
NULL, a missing or inappropriate value.

The first transfinite ordinal number.
The first uncountable ordinal number.
The complex cube roots of 1.
The Wright Omega function. A general differential form.
The number of distinct prime divisors of n.
An arithmetic function. The self-application combinator.

The elasticity of financial options.
The tracking error of an investment manager.
In linguistics, the phonological word.
The archetype of a manuscript tradition.
In eschatology, the symbol for the end of everything.

The beginning of my first week without tv.
No more movies. If I have nothing to do
or I'm too bored to do anything, I'll just sit still
see what happens. Be like weather.
Be under the weather, with the weather,
in weather. Watch weather from the window.
Wait for change, in me and the weather.
How will I change? This is life and not life.
In 15 years or so I'll be gone from the earth,
bones whitening on some mountain
or rotting in the lowlands river or estuary I lived near,
flesh to sweat flesh with the population, dead.

This death, consciousness of which should give
this life's activities perspective, except for the red
sunset which remains untouched by atomic IQ;
and dead, laying open to the blue sky and dry leaves
one autumn like last autumn, or the autumn
I realized my insignificance.
--after the Wikipedia entry, “Omega”

www.ronnowpoetry.com
The phone rang in Red Lodge.  The sun had already faded behind the mountain, and the street outside where the bike was parked was covered in darkness. Only the glow from the quarter moon allowed the bike to be visible from my vantage point inside the Pollard’s Lobby.  The hotel manager told me I had a call coming in and it was from Cooke City.  By the time I got to the phone at the front desk, they had hung up. All that the manager had heard from the caller was that I was needed in Cooke City just before the line had gone dead.  Because of the weather, my cell phone reception was spotty, and the hotel’s phone had no caller I.D.

Cooke City was 69 miles to the West, a little more than an hour’s drive under normal circumstances.  The problem is that you can never apply the word normal to crossing Beartooth Pass even under the best of conditions, and certainly not this early in the season.  I wondered about the call and the caller, and what was summoning me to the other side.  There was 11,000 feet of mountain in between the towns of Red Lodge and Cooke City, and with a low front moving in from the West, all signals from the mountain were to stay put.

Beartooth Pass is the highest and most formidable mountain crossing in the lower 48 States.  It is a series of high switchback turns that crisscross the Montana and Wyoming borders, rising to an elevation of 10,947 ft.  If distance can normally be measured in time, this is one of nature’s timeless events.  This road is its own lord and master. It allows you across only with permission and demands your total respect as you travel its jagged heights either East or West.  Snow and rockslides are just two of the deadly hazards here, with the road itself trumping both of these dangers when traveled at night.

The Beartooth Highway, as gorgeous as it is during most summer days, is particularly treacherous in the dark.  Many times, and without warning, it will be totally covered in fog. Even worse, during the late spring and early fall, there is ice, and often black ice when you rise above 7000 feet. Black ice is hard enough to see during the daytime, but impossible to see at night and especially so when the mountain is covered in fog. At night, this road has gremlins and monsters hiding in its corners and along its periphery, ready to swallow you up with the first mistake or indiscretion that a momentary lack of attention can cause.

The word impossible is part of this mountains DNA.

: Impossible- Like the dreams I had been recently having.

: Impossible- Like all of the things I still had not done.

: Impossible- As the excuses ran like an electric current
                         through all that I hated.

: Impossible- Only in the failure of that yet to be conquered.

: Impossible- For only as long as I kept repeating the word.

Now it was my time to make a call.  I dialed the cell number of my friend Mitch who worked for the U.S. Forest Service in Cooke City. Mitch told me what I already knew and feared. There was snow on both sides of the road from Red Lodge to Cooke City, and with the dropping temperatures probably ice, and possibly black ice, at elevations above 7500 feet.

Mitch lived in Red Lodge and had just traveled the road two hours earlier on his way home.  He said there had been sporadic icy conditions on the Red Lodge side of the mountain, causing his Jeep Wagoneer to lose traction and his tires to spin when applying his brakes in the sharpest turns.  The sharpest corners were the most dangerous parts of this road, both going up and even more so when coming down. Mitch warned me against going at night and said: “Be sure to call me back if you decide to leave.”

The Red Lodge side of the mountain would be where I would begin my trip if I decided to go, with no telling how bad the Cooke City descent would be on the Western side.  This is assuming I was even able to make it over the top, before then starting the long downward spiral into Cooke City Montana.

The phone rang again!  This time I was able to get to the front desk before the caller got away.  In just ten seconds I was left with the words ringing in my ears — “Everything is ready, and we implore you to come, please come to Cooke City, and please come tonight.”  

Now, it was my time to choose.  I had to decide between staying where it was safe and dry, or answering the call and making the journey through the dark to where fate was now crying out to me. I put the phone down and walked out the front doors of the Pollard Hotel and into the dim moonlight that was shining through the clouds and onto the street.  The ‘Venture’ sat in its soft glow, parked horizontally to the sidewalk, with its back tire pressed up against the curb and its front tire pointed due North.  The bike was not showing any bias either East or West and was not going to help with this decision.  If I decided to go, this choice would have to be all mine.

The original plan had been to stay in Red Lodge for two more days, awaiting friends who still had not arrived from a trip to Mount Rushmore. Then together we had planned a short stopover in Cody, which was not more than ninety-minutes away. From there we planned to take the ‘Chief Joseph Highway’ to Cooke City, which is both a beautiful and safe way around Beartooth Pass. Safety drifted out of my consciousness like a distant mistress, and I looked North and heard the mountain call out to me again.

As much as I wanted to see my friends, the voice that was calling from inside was getting harder and harder to ignore.  With the second phone call, my time in Red Lodge grew short in its importance, and I knew in the next two minutes I would have to choose.

I also knew that if I stood in the clouded moonlight for more than two more minutes I would never decide.  Never deciding is the hallmark of all cowardly thought, and I hoped on this night that I would not be caught in its web as victim once again.  

                                         My Decision Was To Go

In ten short minutes, I emptied my room at the Pollard, checked out, and had the bike loaded and ready at the curb.  I put my warmest and most reflective riding gear on, all the while knowing that there was probably no one to see me. No one on that lonely road, except for the deer, coyote, or elk, that would undoubtedly question my sanity as they watched me ride by in the cold dark silence.  I stopped at the gas station at the end of town and topped off the tank --- just in case.  Just in case was something I hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with, as the ride would at most take less than a half a tank of gas. It made me feel better though, so I topped off, paid the attendant, and rode slowly out towards U.S. Highway # 212.  

As I headed West toward the pass, I noticed one thing conspicuous in its absence. In fifteen minutes of travel, I had not passed one other vehicle of any kind going in either direction.  I was really alone tonight and not only in my thoughts.  It was going to be a solitary ride as I tried to cross the mountain. I would be alone with only my trusted bike as my companion which in all honesty — I knew in my heart before leaving the hotel.  

Alone, meant there would be no help if I got into trouble and no one to find me until probably morning at the earliest.  Surviving exposed on the mountain for at least twelve hours is a gamble I hoped I wouldn’t have to take.

I kept moving West. As I arrived at the base of the pass I stopped, put the kickstand down and looked up.  What was visible of the mountain in the clouded moonlight was only the bottom third of the Beartooth Highway. The top two thirds disappeared into a clouded mist, not giving up what it might contain or what future it may have hidden inside of itself for me.  With the kickstand back up and my high beam on, I slowly started my ascent up Beartooth Pass.

For the first six or seven miles the road surface was clear with snow lining both sides of the highway.  The mountain above, and the ones off to my right and to the North were almost impossible to see.  What I could make out though, was that they were totally snow covered making this part of southern Montana look more like December or January, instead of early June.  The road had only opened a month ago and it was still closing at least three out of every seven days.  I remembered to myself how in years past this road never really opened permanently until almost the 4th of July.

When the road was closed, it made the trip from Red Lodge to Cooke City a long one for those who had to go around the mountain.  Many people who worked in Cooke City actually lived in Red Lodge.  They would ‘brave’ the pass every night when it was open, but usually only during the summer months. They would do this in trucks with 4-wheel drive and S.U.V.’s but never on a motorcycle with only two wheels.  Trying to cross this pass on a motorcycle with high performance tires, in the fog, and at night, was a horse of an entirely different color.  

At about the seven-mile mark in my ascent I again stopped the bike and looked behind me. I was about to enter the cloud barrier.  The sight below from where I had just come was breathtakingly beautiful.  If this was to be the last thing I would ever see before   entering the cloud, it would be a fitting photograph on my passport into eternity.

I looked East again, and it was as if the lights from Red Lodge were calling me back, saying “Not tonight Kurt, this trip is to be made another time and for a better reason.” I paused, but could think of no better reason, as I heard the voice on the phone say inside my mind, “Please come,” so I retracted the kickstand and entered the approaching fog.

There was nothing inviting as I entered the cloud.  The dampness and the moisture were immediate and all enveloping, as the visibility dropped to less than fifty feet.  It was so thick I could actually see rain droplets as it passed over my headlight.  The road was still clear though and although it was hard to see, its surface was still good.  The animals that would normally concern me at this time of night were a distant memory to me now. The road stayed like this for what seemed to be another two or three miles, while it trapped me in its continuing time warp of what I still had to overcome.

It then turned sharply right, and I heard a loud ‘wail’ from inside the bike’s motor.  My heart immediately started racing as I thought to myself, ‘What a place to have the engine break down.’  It only took a few more seconds though to see that what I thought was engine failure was actually the tachometer revving off the scale on the dash.  The rear tire had lost traction, and in an involuntary and automated response I had given it more throttle to maintain my speed. I now had the engine turning at over 5000 r.p.m.’s in an attempt to get the rear tire to again make contact with the road.  Slowing my speed helped a little, but I was now down to 10 MPH, and it was barely fast enough to allow me to continue my ascent without the rear tire spinning again.

                                  I Could Still Turn Around And Go Back    

I was now at an elevation above 8,000 ft, and it was here that I had to make my last decision.  I could still turn around and go back.

While the road surface was only semi-good, I could turn around and head back in the direction from which I had just come.  I could go back safely, but to what and to whom? I knew my spirit and my heart would not go with me, both choosing to stay on this hill tonight regardless of the cost.  “If I turn around and go back, my fear is that in my lack of commitment, I will lose both of them forever. The mountain will have then claimed what my soul cannot afford to lose.”  I looked away from Red Lodge for the last time, and once again my eyes were pointed toward the mountain’s top.

It was three more miles to the summit based on my best estimation.

From there it would be all down hill.  The fear grew deeper inside of me that the descent would be even more treacherous as I crested the top and pushed on to the mountain town of Cooke City below.  Cooke City and Red Lodge were both in Montana, but the crest of this mountain was in Wyoming, and it looked down on both towns as if to say … ‘All passage comes only through me.’      

This time I did not stop and look over my shoulder. Instead, I said a short prayer to the gods that protect and watch over this place and asked for only one dispensation — and just one pass through the dark.  My back wheel continued to spin but then somehow it would always regain traction, and I continued to pray as I slowly approached the top.  

As I arrived at the summit, the road flattened out, but the cloud cover grew even more dense with visibility now falling to less than ten feet.  I now couldn’t see past my front fender, as the light from my headlamp bounced off the water particles with most of its illumination reflected back onto me and not on the road ahead.

In conditions like this it is very hard to maintain equilibrium and balance. Balance is the most essential component of any two-wheeled form of travel. Without at least two fixed reference points, it’s hard to stay straight upright and vertical.  I’ve only experienced this once before when going through a mountain tunnel whose lights had been turned off. When you can’t see the road beneath you, your inner sense of stability becomes compromised, and it’s easier than you might think to get off track and crash.

This situation has caused many motorcyclists to fall over while seemingly doing nothing wrong. It creates a strange combination of panic and vertigo and is not something you would ever want to experience or deal with on even a dry road at sea level.  On an icy road at this elevation however, it could spell the end of everything!

My cure for this has always been to put both feet down and literally drag them on top of the road surface below. This allows my legs to act as two tripods, warning me of when the bike is leaning either too far to the left or to the right.  It’s also dangerous. If either leg comes in contact with something on the road or gets hung up, it could cause the very thing it’s trying to avoid. I’ve actually run over my own foot with the rear wheel and it’s not something you want to do twice.

                     Often Causing What It’s Trying To Avoid

At the top of the pass, the road is flat for at least a mile and gently twists and turns from left to right.  It is a giant plateau,10,000 feet above sea level. The mountain then starts to descend westward as it delivers its melting snow and rain to the Western States. Through mighty rivers, it carries its drainage to the Pacific Ocean far beyond.  As I got to the end of its level plain, a passing thought entered my consciousness.  With the temperature here at the top having risen a little, and only just below freezing, my Kevlar foul-weather gear would probably allow me to survive the night.  On this mountaintop, there is a lot of open space to get off the road, if I could then only find a place to get out of the wind.  

I let that thought exit my mind as quickly as it entered. The bike was easily handling the flat icy areas, and I knew that the both of us wanted to push on.  I tried to use my cell phone at the top to call Mitch at home.  I was sure that by now he would be sitting by the fire and drinking something warm.  This is something I should have done before I made the final decision to leave.  I didn’t, because I was sure he would have tried to talk me out of it, or worse, have forbidden me to go. This was well within his right and purview as the Superintendent of all who passed over this mountain.

My phone didn’t work!  This was strange because it had worked from the top last spring when I called my family and also sent cell-phone pictures from the great mountain’s summit.  I actually placed three calls from the top that day, two to Pennsylvania and one to suburban Boston.

                                         But Not Tonight!

As I started my descent down the western *****, I knew it would be in first gear only.  In first gear the engine would act as a brake or limiter affecting my speed, hopefully without causing my back tire to lose traction and break loose. With almost zero visibility, and both feet down and dragging in the wet snow and ice, I struggled to stay in the middle of the road.  It had been over an hour since leaving Red Lodge, and I still had seen no other travelers going either East or West. I had seen no animals either, and tonight I was at least thankful for that.

The drop off to my right (North) was several thousand feet straight down to the valley below and usually visible even at night when not covered in such cloud and mist.  To my left was the mountain’s face interspersed with open areas which also dropped several thousands of feet to the southern valley below.  Everything was uncertain as I left the summit, and any clear scenery had disappeared in the clouds. What was certain though was my death if I got too close to the edge and was unable to recover and get back on the road.

There were guardrails along many of the turns and that helped, because it told me that the direction of the road was changing.  In the straight flat areas however it was open on both sides with nothing but a several thousand-foot fall into the oblivion below.

Twice I ran over onto the apron and felt my foot lose contact with the road surface meaning I was at the very edge and within two feet of my doom.  Twice, I was sure that my time on this earth had ended, and that I was headed for a different and hopefully better place. Twice, I counter steered the bike to the left and both feet regained contact with the road as the front tire weaved back and forth with only the back tire digging in and allowing me to stay straight up.

As I continued my descent, I noticed something strange and peculiar.  After a minute or two it felt like I was going faster than you could ever go in first gear.  It took only another instant to realize what was happening.  The traction to the rear tire was gone, and my bike and I were now sliding down the Western ***** of Beartooth pass.  The weight of the bike and myself, combined with the gravity of the mountain’s descent, was causing us to go faster than we could ever go by gearing alone.  Trying to go straight seemed like my only option as the bike felt like it had lost any ability to control where it was going.  This was the next to last thing I could have feared happening on this hill.

The thing I feared most was having to use either the front or rear brakes in a situation like this.  That would only ensure that the bike would go out of control totally, causing the rear wheel to come around broadside and result in the bike falling over on its opposite side. Not good!  Not good at all!

Thoughts of sliding off the side of the mountain and into the canyons below started running through my mind.  Either falling off the mountain or being trapped under the bike while waiting for the next semi-truck to run over me as it crossed the summit in the darkened fog was not something I welcomed. Like I said before, not good, not good at all!

My mind flashed back to when I was a kid and how fast it seemed we were going when sledding down the hill in front of the local hospital.  I also remembered my disappointment when one of the fathers told me that although it seemed fast, we were really only going about ten or fifteen miles an hour.  I wondered to myself how fast the bike was really going now, as it slid down this tallest of all Montana mountains? It seemed very, very fast.  I reminded myself over and over, to keep my feet down and my hand off the brakes.

If I was going to crash, I was going to try and do it in the middle of the road. Wherever that was now though, I couldn’t be sure.  It was finally the time to find out what I had really learned after riding a motorcycle for over forty years.  I hoped and prayed that what I had learned in those many years of riding would tonight be enough.

As we continued down, the road had many more sharp turns, swerving from right to left and then back right again.  Many times, I was right at the edge of my strength. My legs battled to keep the bike upright, as I fought it as it wanted to lean deeper into the turns.  I almost thought I had the knack of all this down, when I instantaneously came out of the cloud.  I couldn’t believe, and more accurately didn’t want to believe, what I was seeing less than a half mile ahead.

The road in front of me was totally covered in black ice.  Black ice look’s almost like cinders at night and can sometimes deceive you into thinking it holds traction when exactly the opposite is true. This trail of black ice led a half mile down the mountain to where it looked like it ended under a guardrail at the end.  What I thought was the end was actually a switchback turn of at least 120 degrees.

It turned sharply to the right before going completely out of my sight into the descending blackness up ahead.

My options now seemed pretty straightforward while bleak.  I could lay the bike down and hope the guard rail would stop us before cascading off the mountain, or I could try to ride it out with the chances of making it slim at best.  I tried digging my feet into the black ice as brakes, as a kid would do on a soapbox car, but it did no good.  The bike kept pummeling toward the guardrail, and I was sure I was now going faster than ever.  As my feet kept bouncing off the ice, it caused the bike to wobble in the middle of its slide. This was now the last thing I needed as I struggled not to fall.

As I got close to the guardrail, and where the road turned sharply to the right, I felt like I was going 100 miles an hour.  I was now out of the cloud and even in the diffused moonlight I could see clearly both sides of the road.  With some visibility I could now try and stay in the middle, as my bike and I headed towards the guardrail not more than 500 feet ahead.  The valley’s below to the North and South were still thousands of feet below me, and I knew when I tried to make the turn that there would be no guardrail to protect me from going off the opposite right, or Northern side.

                   Time Was Running Out, And A Choice Had To Be Made

The choices ran before my eyes one more time — to be trapped under a guardrail or to run off a mountain into a several thousand foot abyss.  But then all at once my soul screamed NO, and that I did have one more choice … I could decide to just make it. I would try by ‘force of will’ to make it around that blind turn.  I became reborn once again in the faith of my new decision not to go down, and I visually saw myself coming out the other side in my mind’s eye.

                                        I Will Make That Turn

I remembered during this moment of epiphany what a great motorcycle racer named **** Mann had said over forty years ago.  

**** said “When you find yourself in trouble, and in situations like this, the bike is normally smarter than you are.  Don’t try and muscle or overpower the motorcycle.  It’s basically a gyroscope and wants to stay upright.  Listen to what the bike is telling you and go with that. It’s your best chance of survival, and in more cases than not, you’ll come out OK.”  With ****’s words fresh and breathing inside of me, I entered the right-hand turn.

As I slowly leaned the bike over to the right, I could feel the rear tire break loose and start to come around.  As it did, I let the handlebars point the front tire in the same direction as the rear tire was coming.  We were now doing what flat track motorcycle racers do in a turn — a controlled slide! With the handlebars totally pressed against the left side of the tank, the bike was fully ‘locked up’ and sliding with no traction to the right.  The only control I had was the angle I would allow the bike to lean over,which was controlled by my upper body and my right leg sliding below me on the road.

Miraculously, the bike slid from the right side of the turn to the left.  It wasn’t until I was on the left apron that the back tire bit into the soft snow and regained enough traction to set me upright. I was not more than three feet from the now open edge leading to a certain drop thousands of feet below.  The traction in the soft snow ****** the bike back upright and had me now pointed in a straight line diagonally back across the road.  Fighting the tendency to grab the brakes, I sat upright again and counter steered to the left. Just before running off the right apron, I was able to get the bike turned and headed once again straight down the mountain.  It was at this time that I took my first deep breath.

In two hundred more yards the ice disappeared, and I could see the lights of Cooke City shining ten miles out in the distance. The road was partially dry when I saw the sign welcoming me to this most unique of all Montana towns.  To commemorate what had just happened, I was compelled to stop and look back just one more time.  I put the kickstand down and got off the bike.  For a long minute I looked back up at the mountain. It was still almost totally hidden in the cloud that I had just come through.  I wondered to myself if any other motorcyclists had done what I had just done tonight — and survived.  I knew the stories of the many that had run off the mountain and were now just statistics in the Forest Service’s logbook, but I still wondered about those others who may had made it and where their stories would rank with mine.

I looked up for the last time and said thank you, knowing that the mountain offered neither forgiveness nor blame, and what I had done tonight was of my own choosing. Luck and whatever riding ability I possessed were what had seen me through. But was it just that, or was it something else? Was it something beyond my power to choose, and something still beyond my power to understand?  If the answer is yes, I hope it stays that way.  Until on a night like tonight, some distant mountain high above some future valley, finally claims me as its own.

                     Was Crossing Tonight Beyond My Power To Choose?

After I parked the bike in front of the Super 8 in Cooke City, I walked into the lobby and the desk clerk greeted me. “Mr Behm,

it’s good to see you again, I’m glad we were able to reach you with that second phone call.  We received a cancellation just before nine, and the only room we had left became available for the night.”

I have heard the calling in many voices and in many forms.  Tonight, it told me that my place was to be in Cooke City and my time in Red Lodge had come to an end.  Some may need more or better reasons to cross their mountain in the dark, but for me, the only thing necessary was for it to call.

                                               …  Until It Calls Again





Gardiner Montana- May, 1996
Joe Bradley Mar 2015
Nestled
in a gyroscope
of allotment, haybail and heath
is the scenery of
my solemn country.
The skyrise, hollows. the
dripping
fat of the land.

The cities have boomed
and they're beautiful.
Like open roses they're
garlands of wire,
pylons and street-lights.
A thorny crown
on a girl in a nightclub. They're
blistering
they drink, kiss and drink.

And all the while
we live with whispers
splashed like
blood in a gutter.
As murmurs
pumped
through the strip-lit veins
of an office block.
Its a life where
prayers
are mist on train windows.

When we walk
we check our
reflection in car windows
and we're beautiful
we run
our hands
through our hair
knowing
we were babies born with
horns for this.

When we ride
its over
railroad boneyards,
the sleepers are
metal teeth locked in
asymmetrical laughter
at everything
at everyone
at nothing.

The skies are a
psychosis of sunlight, clouds,
vapour trails,
it's heaven
and
we're bent at the alter,
our shadow on
the crypt
has horns.
Francie Lynch Sep 2017
I want to dance with you again,
Before the light descends;
Dance, the troubadour sang:

     Dance me to the end of love.

Place yours in mine,
We'll wind with time;
Repose your head, close your eyes,
I'll hear you breathe another goodbye.
Can't you dance with me again.

I'm spinning off this elliptic world;
Holding the dark side of my moon,
Orbiting 'round this star lit room.
Waxing on the upbeat,
Waning on the down,
Dancing on a gyroscope,
Through phases round and round.

I awaken, tapping toes,
And humming in the after glow.

Yes, I danced with you!
Did I dance with you?
I didn't dance with you.
And never will again.
Leonard Cohen: "Dance Me to The End of Love"
Pisceanesque Jan 2017
Her honey'd hole a wet, *******,
her liquid gold a silky stream where
sliding thrusts were mounted, hot,
and arching bodies dared not stop;
where moments flowed into the next
and both were drowned in comfort ***
and eyes were riding each one's soul:
his quest for freedom her only goal

And rather than come up for air
this fiery passion sank them there,
(as both an anchor, 'twined like rope,
and locked in pelvic gyroscope)
her swollen thighs around his waist,
her nails embedded, tongues embraced
and fishing for that final taste
with every touch, in every place

Fused as one with melting cores,
(her curling toes demanding more)
his urgent need to plunge her rightly
sealed them closed with hearts bound tight, and
all around them
walls of water washed their sins
in quickening waves that locked them in
with swats and spanks
and gentle yanks and saucy stares
while skin to skin and hand to soaking hair

Like rolling tide to rocky shore,
(her legs thrown wide, his pelvis sore)
the crash and grind of karmic ties
were deep explored and fast revived
- with whispered greed they came alive -
awash with ***** un-restraint and
thrived, un-reined, with fate to blame,
their pulsing needs through every vein,
infused as one and charged by same:
her wild release on which he came
an ocean, calling out her name
© Tamara Natividad
www.pisceanesque.com
Written 10 January, 2017
Payton Hayes Feb 2021
Anna
Red hair fell like fire
on her thin shoulders.
Her wide, open eyes, now
seemed sunken in, and sadness,
for a moment, lingered there.
This was her last night on earth.
She again, ran through the events
that took place earlier that night.
When she was with him, in the back
of the Impala.
Images of the car's windows glossed with a
sheen of steam, blazed across her mind.
A smile blazed across her face.
She thought of his smile and her own widened.
She thought of the way he touched her, so gently,
like a feather moving over her. The way he left kisses
in a trail across her skin. The way he held her, as if
nothing on the earth could ever take her away.
Not in that moment.
But there are more than the kind
and protecting angels in this world. There are
demons. But even so, worse are the angels that
have turned their backs on heaven and now
work for the forces of evil.
The angels that would tear their comrades
from this world.
The angels
among
the
demons.

Crowley
Black.
Black as dark as night.
Black as dark as the inner
reaches of the earth.
Black as dark as death itself.
Black like blood.
Red.
Red as deep as warm, copper veins.
Red as deep as magma beneath
the earth.
Red as deep as rage at the sign
of betrayal.
Red like smoke.
Twisted.
Splashes of agony and hatred and
remorse stained his tattered soul.
A true evil radiated from his
vessel. A crafty and
malicious essence raced through his veins.
But he was no Lucifer.
Somewhere, deep down,
there was still a man who
longed to be loved. A man
who longed to be forgiven of his cruel
mistakes in his past life. Deep down, there
was still a man who longed to come back to
the light.
In a world so dark as his, the only light was the fire,
which should have brought comfort, but only
brought pain.
Deep down, he liked the dark.

Mary
Hair like threads of spun gold
tangled around her face. She was fair with
bright blue eyes that held
hues as heavenly as the sun-beaten
sky.
Soft, angular cheekbones sloped gently
down, a tinge of pink, coloring them slightly.
Locks of her wavy hair met her shoulders
but beneath her fair
appearance, she was a
rough girl.
A hunter.
She had seen things most terrible in the world,
thinks that no one should ever see.
And still, he remained a
loving mother and a kind person
in spite of
her demons.

Sam
Echoes of a former friend
rang throughout his
conscious mind.
Mischievous and
sinister laughter danced
around in his head like demons
howling and gibbering in
the night.
He could feel his brother's presence
and the angel too,
but felt only more unnerved
because he knew he was the
only one who could hear the voices.
Another shrill scream pierced
his ears and he ducked, holding
his head between two shaking palms.
Bright flashes of color exploded at
the corners of his vision and danced
around his eyes like a psychedelic
kaleidoscope.
He went spiraling again in his mind and
every color blinked out, like a light.
Everything went dark as the psychotic laughter
echoed throughout
his
skull.

Castiel
Over the hill moved a creature, round and
Glowing with a cold, white light.
Like a spectacular
Moonrise.
It had hundreds and hundreds of
Eyes in every imaginable color, faceted
Like jewels that covered wheels within wheels of
It’s spherical body.
It was an infinite series of intersecting
Rings that spun constantly in
All directions.
Like a gyroscope.
The rings looked like steel but
The substance was
Pearlescent and, like an oil slick,
Contained all of the rainbow within it.
Steel-like whips caressed the ground
And skies as it moved.
And at its center stood two
Wings, upright.
Feathers made from the metallic
Material rippled in the air. Around the wings pooled a
Sticky, warm light. A sheen of phosphorescent light coated the
Feathers and pooled around the wings.

Dean
Through the windshield, the soft
glow of a solitary streetlight glistened
over his cheekbones
and poured down
his jaw that had grown taught from
rapt contemplation.
His coarse, sandy-brown hair, was messed
from his last tango with a monster.
Brilliant flecks of gold danced around in
his hazel eyes,
entwining with years of past remorse and
echoes of both sad and happy memories of
being on the road.
He kept a firm hold of the wheel, gently guiding the
old muscle car down the road.
Tears prickled behind his gorgeous, tired eyes,
but didn't dare escape.  The plastic army
soldier stared him down, but he
could pay him little mind.
His brother, riding shotgun, slept
sitting upright, his long, chocolate locks
covering his eyes as he dreamt with
his forehead
against the cool window.

Lucifer
A luminescent beauty radiated from him.
Behind his tattered vessel's eyes, a blazing
light shined like a beacon in the night.
The fury of a thousand suns, and
the beauty of a million moons.
The bright and morning star.
The most magnificent in all of the angels,
yet far more dark than any demon.
Sinfully exquisite.
Those who say he has horns have never
looked upon his countenance, for the gems
faceted there rival the colors of the morning skies.
And a voice like silk, soft as the
timid pulse,
a voice that could lead you to your own destruction.
Hands both so gelid and searing, you'd quiver
at the touch.
Hands that have brought so many to their death.
These poems were written in 2016. They were inspired by the characters of the widely popular CW Series, Supernatural.
JP Goss Mar 2015
You’re swimming, okay,
And the Bible suddenly opens up.
Not many people are faced with this,
Except you: you’re an exception.

How do you take it?

Barely, would the sublime horror of communion pass on your lips
Once the ocean take its Leviathan form, and it opens its mouth to speak.
Its oratory becomes very clear in the maelstroms of countless gallons
Rushing blue cannibalizes itself before you; you have no time to think of death
When the salt’s burning your eyes and you’ve finally figured
How useful a gyroscope can be.

Too soon, three darknesses will emerge from the desolate homily
Taught not to discriminate in thought or action: the backs of your eyes
Straining against the buoyancy, the restfulness of not seeing a bottom,
And the path Jonah’s bones took, the disbeliever.

Mostly, you’ll want to congratulate yourself like a legend,
You wonderful *******, when you come in crashing on the waves.
Experimental metaphor about being unhappy
Francie Lynch Apr 2016
Whatever hand swirled
In the cosmic bucket,
Continues to stir the stars.
Keep swirling them
Across my sky.
In daylight I know
There's work afoot
Maintaining the equilibrium
Of the gyroscope;
But remove it,
And we're feeding oats
To the horsemen's rides.
The stars will fall in upon themselves;
And me,
And you.
Digits of chance, luck, chaos and coincidence,
And the thumb of phenomena
Move through the infinite waters,
Clockwise,
One second at a time,
Swirling, swirling, swirling,
Like the snail on a rock.
Evan Backward Apr 2015
I am not a charity case.
I will not be liked or loved
Because I am so weak.
So weak, that I make you,
The martyr who bears me,
Feel strong.  That I give you purpose.
I refuse, to let my table be supported
By you and your makeshift table leg.

If anything, I pride myself as an individual.
I am strong.
I am independent.
My happiness, not unlike
The spinning center of a gyroscope,
Is existent entirely independent
Of your influence.
I don't need you.

I want you.
I want you because you are kind.
You are genuine, you understand.
I want you because you are comforting,
You give me that which no other can.

I wouldn't want you,
If the motives for what you do,
Were different than what I'd hoped.
Altogether disillusioned.
Written back in the day
The change in his habits was hard to define,
He thought, getting older, had shortened his time,
Less time to waste sleeping, for rest or respite,
From eight hours to six hours, to four hours at night.

He’d sit up late working, and not watch the clock
At midnight he’d vaguely hear something tick-tock,
But still would sit up with his eyes full of rue
And not get to bed until one, maybe two.

Awake before dawn he would feel some relief,
That death had not squandered his life in his sleep,
And though he was tiring, he wouldn’t give in,
Began to see sleeping as some kind of sin.

Then down to an hour, and then to a half
He ended up napping short time by the hearth,
Five minutes would pass, he’d be fully awake
When under his chair he would feel the earth quake.

And when his eyes opened and looked to the skies
He’d see giant gimbals above the sunrise,
That held the earth spinning in place like a top
A gyroscope, seeming it never would stop.

Then in the dark hours when all were asleep,
He’d see all the monsters come out for a peep,
Come out from their hidings in forest and glen
Whenever they hadn’t to fear meeting men.

They’d play in the shallows, they’d play in the streams,
They’d dash in and out of the sleeping mens dreams,
They’d laugh and they’d frolic up high in the trees,
And wave in the branches with every slight breeze.

And sometimes they’d argue, and sometimes they’d fight,
Hip-hopping from one to the other all night,
They’d not see the watcher, awake in his den
For monsters see horrors in all kinds of men.

The world would return to the way it had been
Before men came begging, and made it unclean,
With meadows and grotto’s and magical spells,
And hedgerows and sedge rows and woods of bluebells.

He sat there in wonder, and watched the full flight
Of worlds unimagined that came out each night,
And suddenly death was the least he would fear
If death would come dreaming and carry him here.

The watcher relaxed and he fell sound asleep
He slept for eight hours with never a peep,
And when he awoke with the rise of the sun,
He wept in his sorrow, what sleep had undone.

David Lewis Paget
Austin Heath Apr 2014
It felt like my brain had been in a gyroscope;
my eyes were screaming and getting
****** by lasers, and my body was going
inside out.
I jumped out of bed, and into the bathroom
slamming one hand on the kitchen sink
and holding the door handle with the other,
then purging the food/poison. Four Times.
My head went from a concrete block to a balloon.
Thick chunks of hamburger meat
like a great serpent flowing from my
gut, outward.
I lied down on the floor for a second;
it was the first time I'd vomited since elementary.
Bukowski would have been proud;
I didn't miss the toilet. Of all the things I'm
bad at, and I still purge like a professional.
All the **** I can't do,
yet I didn't miss.
Jonny Angel Dec 2013
Think about re-entry,
holding that stick steady,
feeling your bottom heating up,
mad violent spinning
& hearing gyroscope-warning-noises.

Think about your daily thoughts,
your crazy-fears,
the kinds that feel like
your losing control
on re-entry,
not.
Sometimes Starr Nov 2016
Sequestered hominid,
a temporary waning of saturation
a flurry of cigarettes and hot words
a tangle just around the core
as my world struggles to straddle
its wobbling gyroscope.

I've got a
Chip on my shoulder

But relentless peaks draw up the sallow vestiges of pride
As the ego tolls again and again
I am happy with what I am
Yet I feel forced to "survive"

Looking back at who I was
Speaks volumes for our culture
The sequestered hominid rotates hues, asleep
He dreams
Of painting his image into history
She
She just sat there.
Her eyes glassy,
that condition you get from staring for long.
She blinked and a tear rolled down her cheek,
her beautiful brown cheeks,
beautiful!
Good God,
she was beautiful.
Something about her vulnerability that struck me,
I enjoyed looking at her while she starred into nothingness.
My mind oscillated between what she must be thinking
and how she must be feeling about what she must be thinking about.
My mind,
a gyroscope spinning in orbit,
dizzy i realized,
i was she.
A packed house as she commence a teacher
in marking hearsay with her titillation of 1000 young minds
while little criminals that burden this structure with tax
and find her discriminating as a lawyer with vibes that well
as her gyroscope always suit with measure of twittering yet pair
of aces does her most thrifty a year again.  Alas!
A Shuli Nov 2017
The drums sound,
They thunder off a roll call.
Present and accounted for is your head,
Splayed raw on the pillow:
A bowling ball of led.

Eyes shuttered
mind can’t help but think how opening them will sound:
A screeching nails on chock board wail echoing through the empty grotto of your right eye.

Not to mention the rusty needle digging out
a radioactive maggot through your right ear: slowly
Boiling simmering festering carelessly twisting on the way out.

The drums sound,
They thunder off a roll call.
Present and accounted for is your head,
One was all it wanted.
One beat to go through the skin of the drum
Until you realize the drum is your heart and still: you see a pierced drum and
Its pain becomes your pain. a violently pierced drum and again

The drums sound,
They thunder off a roll call.
Present and accounted for is your head,
A led balloon gyroscope looking down at the bathroom sink.

No, I don’t think I have a migraine today.
Nothing a pare of  The darkest cheep sunglasses,
Six  or eight pills of whatever,
And a couple of cigarettes can’t put a dent into.

The drums sound,
They thunder off a roll call.
Sound off, left (left first because it hurts less) right. Left,
Right, left
©2017 all rights reserved
David Lessard Nov 2017
When I heard your voice, I smiled,
you were telling me that you were mine;
my heart was comforted and warmed,
outside it rained, but also, sun did shine.

Sunshine in the rain, is rare and lovely,
both reflect the nature of one's life;
without rain, we've no flowers,
without sun, there's always strife.

Your my balance in this old world,
the gyroscope that rights my way;
the special one my heart is drawn to,
that highlights,  my ordinary day.

When I heard your voice, I smiled,
you were telling me you loved me so;
my soul was touched and satisfied,
because your love, it makes me whole.

When I heard your voice, I smiled,
you laughed and told me foolish things;
the crazy way that people fall in love,
the crazy glue that true love brings.
Watch me
and I am a wheel -
always finding a way
to spin anything into gold.
But given just the right moment,
and just the right rush of speed,
you will see me as I truly am:
A gyroscope,
my angular momentum
keeping me upright.
And you -
You are always the right rush of speed,
And it is always the right moment.
Joseph Zenieh Jan 2018
TIME OR ENDLESS SPACE ?

So great is life if it's like space,
No years to count time's nervous pace,
No dates to sever people's lives,
But space to join as it contrives.

That man lived hundreds years ago,
And this, years later time did throw.
They are joined on one land and earth.
Why should time sever them by birth ?

How great is life in boundless scope,
With no days tied to gyroscope,
But just an endless view where all
Are joined in space outside time's rule.

We live with all those whom we love
And share the rule of space above.
All joined in one group with no years
To bind us with time and its fears.

BY JOSEPH ZENIEH
____________
Final Ellipsis Chapter XXXI
Horcondising  Castle Reign - Sudpichi
Transversal Valleys  The  Ferments - Parapsychological Regression

Vernarth says:
“In this regression, I was fascinated in the final capitulars mode, in the lands of the transversal valleys of Alhué, Pichi- Chile. Where I have the cradle of incipient mythology, among spirits sheltered in valleys of dusty roads and the fringed concessions of the Lord of Death, in the full lands of the Collateral Valleys, Land of Borker, Kaitelka, Leiak, Espantacuculi, Autraldisis, Hyperdisis, Universe Zig Zag, Wasos, Spermazoid Fable and Mountaineers etc; that will make up the mythological and fabulous beings glossary in this region of the Transparent imaginary castle; that it is my residence and my parents without limits or parallels in a large estate of divine blood and myself; Vernarth de Sudpichi, Wernarth-Werthian of compulsion and steely romanticism, of the majestic living spirit of the astral Commander of Alexander the Great of Macedon. Here I am also Macedonian, in the domains of my ancestors with more than seven hundred years, which will be held in this savage auction of all the Horcondising ranchers, in convalescence before my purgation. All will be deprived of their normality, and I not of the mine! But in this regression, I have to set off with all my ancestors to the high mighty Horcondising; Castle of our aristocratic lineage that will take me to my father Bernardolipo and my mother Luccica; making me her son again and Hetairoi Commander of the magnanimous Phalanges of Alexander the Great.

Vernarth, beyond a before, collects honey from the ******* of a pale blowfly. By opening his sclera, with a bad step, he tries to continue dreaming, to subtract minutes from the contained time and neutered micro space of his Period. What would Mr. Hefestos say, if the light of Jesus would be the basis of a tri-founder Chronophone, starting a spectral casting, Ideal to roll from the top, among so many organic masses and his round neck? On this clinging to the jars of altered bacteria that ran in terror through the native forest, their languages continued to ferment, devoid of terrifying languages, in which their piggy banks and clods of fear were drained, that new fabric roofs rise through the raids. failed. Sour loves and sour laborious flashes on his empty molars, sublingual substances bubbling intraorally and intraorganically. Through the other orifices and interstices, new intestinal sounds drawn, calm the rhythm not only of the distended ignorance of my sustenance from apples and bacteria trembling between my steps to redeem. Some celeripedes sharpen their stride, and others weakly digest the faded day of advancing without trick or fiction, to that anorexic politics, of not stopping walking, even if the cold makes me amnesiac, I will sit naked at dawn to paint on the exhausted mural, I will wait the downpour of colors to rearrange this sad and melancholic song. They will explode as with their marsupial bags on the grouped beings that were waiting to be surveyed to persuade the bad omen of being auctioned to another rank confessed aphonic ferment, in this vessel on a stove of so much frank sliding, without stopping without false support, ending the day from where I left, at the table next to my feline Goddess Pirucha, free from this press, which does not issue any limits, only seconds that run with gasping flares at myself running with my back to my identical, arriving where my anachronistic intervals speak, my new births. If it is that I break off the cliff and am born again in new strides, if I am or was I...?

Vernarth says:
“At five in the morning we sit down to watch the exhausting specters, royal masters come for you and me to give the diadem or mushroom halo over the Horcondising. Adelimpia my grandmother, takes between her hands, tireless lines by palmist possess, in her iris laser, makes her see more than read with blisters in her eyes from so much reading, poppies in her hands from so much watering the mountainous skies. They get up, Kaitelka takes all the Downian language, Aunt Trueno, fight the pyre of loyal false clowns and bio dreams, to reprimand the living eternally, what I collect from today will be wood for my candle, so in the Ganges of Pichi I will rasmillar the ashes of other handsome brave men trying to die. When I return, my right hand will fit each year of my obituary anniversary, I will try to understand the shadow of pus from Thanatos lecturing to know, to die, maybe a thousand years will take me, but the Ceibo tree of my duplicate coral house will always take me where my Christ, making me thunder of years of round and round, to take me from my brothers and to roam the pasture tenderly by the thin clouds covering me on my pyre. Bernardolipo my grandfather, is with strands of alfalfa and in the hands of others, horses lacking in vitamins, lacking green palaces, salmon paths to announce with horns before leaving, with an arrival from the west to the east, both to narrow in their sleeves wounded, already drying off from the serous mountain spittle, in a pornographic nap of young killers. They close the portal of my Uncle Hugo, full of olive edges and dowels, whims and conditions of stars between grounds, in the well-run teeth of some swallowed shadows of the badly created threshold. Eight in roundabout…, eight feet looking at the night ground, rags that take the paste from their shoes, in the luster of beautiful life, and that is where I stay walking. They take their rakes of grafted winter plum housed in the suppuration of the caterpillar, with their interminable divine garments, with divine grace to overshadow it, she does for me what I do for her, every pain of the soul suffered by jealousy pain who wants to moo in the secretion of the wound, every little thing, every little life, preceded by the donor Pichi- bio, or microscopic life that strides along the cobblestones of the dying Bohemian lamp. They have to make captivating sounds, lurking sounds, Corti pipe ***** sweetness, sonic plant - sonic biblo in order to use it in sounds without clothes, which were once made of very generous acetate, or pieces to pay attention, when a green cricket sobs , for the departure of her beloved red cricket mother. How incapable we are of collecting memories never remembered, like the minimum dividing phrase between my heart and that of the cricket in the small corner of its left thorax. It's half past five, very close to the monk's valley, the Scarecrow, on his knees was picking up one of his gold teeth, the slime from the tapestry of his floor shone, and his clavicle was *****, almost cybernetic, moving away from one of his incisors gold teeth. When my maternal grandmother was surprised by Queen Anne, he blushed and gulped down another drain. Adelimpia, Bernardolipo, Aunt Trueno, and Anne or Queen Anne appeared, dancing in broken measures of Brahms dances, to meet the Horcondising massif, to open routes to the end of a purgative phase. The scarecrow, fell apart and covered his face, but when he connoted that he felt emotions, he joined them, so that in the dark dawn more stars could be seen as in the oven roasted milk, in stormy shadows and stormy ladles, for the snack of the cloudy adventure to reach the dreaded corner of beyond the Sudpichi that was left behind. The man of the cornfields, scare crows, stood out in the day, sharpened the night, to arrive quickly at the tabernacle of Joshua de Piedra, to finish the ranks of the proscenium, of the souls of the new space to dwell. When walking, between paths blown by the trapped chest of the giant melancholic flat-footed ogre, who was trapped in rags, but smelling of chamomile with blooming mistletoe shoots, lighting a corner match in the Zig Zag Universe.

Here the Cyprian squirrel smokes, hiding from rays and sparks, not situated internal winds, in the name of the dragged crushed leaves of certain minks of the crusades in Jerusalem and in the cut off Merovingian lives, placebo, gyroscope, trident, where my worst go balloons and emetic parties riding them in the microscopic rising of my Sun, in a cascade of external cries, where I pronounced the symbols of terror, in which Lepanto's blood runs. Serene faint orchid black blood; fled widow amidst stoning or slicing pyres.  Turbine oar, which circulates my right and left hand. The sand lapse twists, twists and becomes wet, ruminant fear of simply not sleeping, eternal chews of the moth-eaten wood of Nazareno, unsnailed nails that swallow my petite ivy hands. The four petards, with their shadows on their backs in late nights of bats from Nostradamus's closet, in this black and sweaty commoner night, I will dress with them, the clothes that will be spun in prophecies, as if walking through the sand of heaven in peace and final , in the dihedral of his own soul, and his temple adding zeroes in the depths of indisposed Love, of sudden love, of love that rises in angular planks and they rise with their little sticks from the devil's triangle, which thus took me at once in the brandy near the shadow of the epitaph of the stream and the smelly sky, ramshackle Heaven ..., Eden of pale exile. The tangent wind, touched the untouchable wind, walking in circles in the arms of a Samurai that glassy ..., in white stupor danced through the green grassland, in the stupid and feverish field, leaning towards a gentle rabbit, among swirls of the gene of a rodent crossing the legs of my grandmother Adelimpia, who moved her cane between the sheets of the new calendar, the year of the rabbit. Go upstairs with the others, stupefied by the moody fumaroles burning, I see the roofs of the Horcondising, I see their sweaty beams of gut fat from ****** henbane, thick veined beams, catching rodent teeth and rearing new claws, to tremble by the Ceiling veins drunk amidst plague scandals dying on the first try. Leiak, omnipresent vague spirit of the gentle water dancer, lives on the water with his chin and slug, his jocular back is seen, breaking the lines of wells between flesh and silhouettes.  Before the First Station, the first of the three remaining nights before reaching the Joshua de Piedra volcano. "



Apostle Saint John continues in a parapsychological trance:

“Queen Anne and Aunt Thunder look at each other with rye crumbs in their hands, walking along the swaying floor; the Goddesses are silent when they breathe again. Vernarth's father; Bernardolipo laces a log and a piece of cheese. Hungry cats jump to the tabletop, Hugh Uncle from Vernarth, lights the log, keeps nosing with thick-gauge chocolate, shafts of white chocolate and southern marshmallow. His grandmother Adelimpia bathes his hands in beautiful water, takes his bow, rolls up his sleeves and jumps to the round dough and to the celestine stone, cooking beautiful tortilla water, baptized on the edges of each penetrating eye. Leiak spirit, runs and superimposes the screen, in dinner show, for four that bulge guts before the tasty bread, Hugh, lifts his envelope from the front end, Bernardolipo takes out his imperfect hat, they eat Christmas rolls, with soft aniseed and nutty aromas as in threads. They eat within the ten minutes that Leiak allows him to eat, otherwise his peer monks of silence will ****** the thick crumbs from his tortillas, which run to his house in an anodyne mouth, cradling funny hallucinations, full belly, full of sleep, without owners, in vocal horns that sound the night, to get up later. Tired and fermented, they sit down to eat, to look reclining, on the warm ground of Heaven, and the heel of the entire green north continues walking along the estuary. Adelimpia sews a sock every night, to put it on the very top, so she would have two more socks left to knit, until she arrived at her high school, to meet Joshua de Piedra, to start the glorified wind, to mediate and reach eternal heaven with a stone, to the empty believers of the beautiful death, of the beautiful deaths of the Horcondising. Here they sleep, they travel, they stretch their hands to heaven, Adelimpia as a seal, now the King of Heaven is wearing, in the first idiomatic reverie that appears, Hildegard von Bingen…, and she collected flowers on the backs of the rabbits with blessed multicolored t-shirts. She tells them komme susser tot - wie ist diese Blau Rabbit? They reply Schoen hilde Blau - the wallhalla will go with us with messages and flowers, to distribute its pollen throughout the world. In the distance, circular northern lights hiccupped as they fell, endless troops opened the plague on the ground, mocking the imprint of the sandals of venerated magicians, of inordinate quadruped *****; Jacinta and Centella, brought the pantry, on the left back and on the third rib the image of Francesco Forgione, who on it had a bundle of corn bread, and milk from a cute sheep that they brought from the garden to taste the days of meek food items, and others in the plates covered by required hands, bread with raisins of old people served on the plateau. Centella with a good ***, she walked with her mother Jacinta, with a disorder of tender and finesse, next to two small donkeys hired from other dreams of a manger, with the muscular leaves of the oak, making the eyelids of the whale heavy down Kaitelka who sang next to the scare crows in delicious hibernation times, on the terrace where there never was one. Acacian sepals and tales of resinous sailors fell, as in the cellars of an entire ancient history, on the archaic and twinkling stables of the Horcondising, the sylphic kites flee swirling over the frightened green sky, like all the hands up on the shoulders of some mountain people , defying bad sleep before they wake up and spill their fury of corrosive acid on the supposedly nobles who wish to pass and cross the bleachers of their island feats, under a humble shoulder of tender feats, of dry leaves on the skirts of the good Lord; owner of the water and of all the eroded gorges of the waterfalls and combinations of the god of the rain that is about to fall.
Adelimpia prepared cornbread and rye from good waters, Aunt Thunder washed the waistbands, the scarecrows cleaned the rattle of his eardrum towards an empire of sounds and a planet of celestial waves, with bread without crumbs, in the face of the pandemonium that was coming. Pocket of loose thread, that is lost in the night and that springs from the day, with ostentatious manners, and how close are they?  While they read all the multicolored letters on the ground about the ceremonial flood. Joshua saw them as a colored fumarole, spoiling their shrunken auras, under the boot of a role stealth, where the brush lunge for her boots begins, which later loom among the epistolary letters of good from Zefián; steward of the greater demon, who would be forced to make the main stained glass, standing on the poles in each hermit tree to recruit the lordship riders of the massive autumn, in an eternal wailing of birch trees in harmony. Uncle Hugh, is a current that builds and circulates against gravity, outlines the chair, mother nature of the new hints of floating islands trying to touch the godmothers of the golden valley and the mysterious shine of their Huasos eyes, still drunk among their jugs of gunman colt. It cuts through the wind like an eternal wind from the Australdisis galaxy, like a snowball in the belly of a marmot, like lost fingers wearing shoes, and without gloves, as if getting lost to find oneself again preferring pale-flow sleds, to cross mounted on the loud silence in the snow at the top and its song. Queen Anne embraces the imagery of her husband Joshua, life and song, it came from the good, wild to beat the yesteryear, I live among trees handcuffed in the mist of the well armed. I bring pellets for my Winchester tired of his locked case, here he spent a whole day in the Lonquen meadows when his plow got jammed, plowing hard rocky backs and soldiers, today my beautiful sower in Valle de Oro, is dredged by the sacred image of our rosary, good Mary, who never tires of putting pillows on our prayers, like sticks in the air in her diluvium eyes. Larks appear, eating nits on the greasy hair of the evil devil, on the copulation of her planted females, ebbing and with amended pleasures, delimited, and atrophied awards for trophies of the good moment for dividing the entire time. She became uncomfortable walking and breathing, our tongues would become thin, and our arms would get tangled in the sticky grass. Leeches rubbed their exposed areas, gargles and spit, cut every minute of being able to regret the atomized step in their entire body. Time was wasting, there were no beings that injured themselves without knowing why they flagellated themselves on earth, since one day a calf suckled them at night on the hillside, running in better circles because of the milk they drank…. blowflies polished their aged wings, butterfly princesses undo their corset, making the world of Vernarth towards a little more toast of bells and books in the right pocket of the Christian beetle, who tried to read it further from the exile and illiteracy of an anthropoid that obscures its oblong patchwork, continuing in the work of educating oneself, of high eternal reigns trained and of forests of currents under the clouds of the night of the abandoned city.


They ferment, and their fingers and toes fall, from thousands of losses in this neglected city, distilled into fermentation eclogue, with malformed sins ascending by the bridle of Vernarth's grandfather; by flanking the great nose of his dilated and degenerate black horse, with an equine shape that transported him from individual to individual and hyper static, subtracting the ferment of his failed and frustrated past mistakes. Its hooves measured twenty-one meters in diameter; its **** seemed to be made of pincers that would crack any tender drawing on the yellowish sky of ceibo trees, of the stormy fermentation in the Horcondising. Adelimpia and Ann, counted and counted on the beads of the sacred rosewood, Hugh sweated his hands, in prone fluctuations of interaction, the Scarecrow and Kaitelca jumped on giant oblong drums, talking about the hidden meadows, and the words crossed for squander them on the repentant. On the left side the round shadow of the prophetic Evil chanted in reverberations with the waves of the curls of the massif, he was almost about to ***** between his eyebrows, the vain opera of Horcondising that did not sound, but if loudly they were corrugated the slopes mourning towards the navel of the hundred feet, which suffered denoting the strips of the nearby town hall, like a transparent soul, carrying in its lacerated hands some pity of retreating and reviving, what the true architecture of life, more than the form ..., makes the light that penetrates solids. In this way the rocky massif pulverized rugged reliefs, like annelids wheezing through the tops of the Infradeep openings, with three groups of three hundred beings, which seemed to be three groups of thousands emerging from their caverns in anguish of the worst confinement of disbelief. Adelimpia, held the cord of the axis of the weary planet, Anne restored the acute crucifix meridians that moved her heart from the sinister side encompassed ..., like a cursed globe moving to another nebula, towards one of its 9600 years in expansion, after oscillating in one of its solar rays, which gathered on the back of the mule Jacinta, multiplying on her bank of meek ideas, to reside above all the assemblages in millions of benefits, since the world is an improper world”

The world has no end; God is a beautiful mute world, where we make mistakes every day believing that we are axiomatic. Rather, we are the junk of an almost noise that tried to leave us as a legacy of the first noise of a creation that felt itself wandering, perhaps without its breathing, in its lipped wise orifice of the most repressible protoforms that continue to devoutly prepare bilious liquids to lead us.   For each dinner, without having stars enjoying themselves in their multi-polygonal sandwiches. Memory is a raging waste, every time we try to get to lick her honey like herself; we are exhausted from a starving minute of non-coexisting life. Hugh and Aunt Thunder, held the mats, so that their own belongings would not be blown up, they, especially Hugh; He sliced a bottle of live jet Tinto in his hands to quell his revolted thirst. Perhaps they wanted to give back to the world a blood source, once and for all to give drink to those who deserve to be it as innocent angels, walking with their calloused plants on vehement fire, to just get to the tithe and not be upset with so much terror. Along the esoteric shore of the river of leaves of Talamí, this is where they will run through pasty meadows and trembling horses, through the easy or the difficult bond imprisoned and paired with the misty physiognomy in mere restlessness. “Alpha day, alpha night, Omega day Omega Night...”
Horcondising  Castle Reign - Sudpichi
Third Eye Candy Mar 2019
I abort the assumption that my life is a narrow frame
and the idea of a frame.
I collude with my better Angels
and drink with the devils that remain nameless.
these days i embark on crude soil
and wishful think the rest of my redemption
like a gyroscope in a soap bubble
toying with the notion
of True North.

I exude the Arabella of my Comedy.
and never am I in Love with the viscous deluge
of my impending calamity. I eat the root of the rain.
but I upheave.
I challenge the voice in the noise. singing backward
from a hollow.
there are more things in my revery
than my sorrow.

sleep is a slow thief with sticky embers.
drooling languid fire where the wick
is most likely limbic nerve.
i prevent myself from a Hell with my name
because your name fits
and that’s my
world.
Doing the gyroscope
spinning around in the hope
that the world isn't flat,

I couldn't cope with that.

The truth hurts in fits and starts
and if you don't fit in
you don't get a part
in the great production.

I remain solidly
the status quo
happy to be with
the things and
you know
it makes sense,

but a tiny piece of me
wants to break away from the jigsaw
wants to dig down to the core
just to see,
TJ Struska Aug 2020
Letter to self: Roman Numeral 17 drug up on charges unrelated to the home invasion on Milwaukee Avenue-seen fleeing with female.
Learned secrets of the Serengeti. A catch torn to pieces. Note: Roman Colosseum desecrated. A raptor in the fan blades.
A diamond in the zealous.
Man, don't ride dem bones.
Some doo-*** ditty- bop of Saint and sinner, stewbums and deadbeat killer clowns.
Open, thy cup runneth over.
Loosen the ties binding to the bone.
The Rorschach Tune-Up Allotment Sale Now Through
Apocalypse Day 7.
Memo to Bixby: Gyroscope Hot Tub Blowout relaxing the flow chart boys uptown. A filtered out flummox of impedance Bixby, Jimmywalk spared the lewd and lascivious. Spike the routers Roman Numeral 17 seen in vicinity, Apocryphal papers flown to Helsinki. Eradicate memo with extreme prejudice. Yours Turner.
This is an older work with minor revision. This was a hands down fire of fun. Just opening up and letting words overtake you.
West Ham
no ham
not even West
unless you're going
that way.

I'm going West
from the East
on track
not off piste.

Sleepers on the tube train
they don't look like spies
maybe that's an agency
thing.

Passing the Emirates
no sign of Sheikhs.

But
there are vacancies
mainly
in the stares of people
who are and are not
aware
that they can be seen.

Nearly,
an internal gyroscope
steers me
in the right direction.


Getting off soon
my old friend the
Moon
has sunk into my
memory,
I'm waiting for the Sun
to rise.

— The End —