i've learned how to smell the circus
i've watched a black mongrel turn into a weasel
tonight the moon's nickname is
crooked betty
and the stars are
bleeding adam's apples
shining like a volcano

i wield a hacksaw and terrible excuses
my mouth is wet with jingle jangle
and situational confusion

everything is temporary.

Ax To Grind

Blood dripping from the eye,
looks like Jesus starting to cry.
I stabbed you with a screwdriver,
blood gushing like a geyser.
Cut off your ears with some scissors,
blood flowing just like rivers.
Took a hacksaw to your nose,
felt so good, used it on tour toes.
I cut off your fingers with garden shears,
they were twenty bucks at the local Sears.
Chopped of your head with my ax,
I'm from the IRS, and you paid no tax,
We don't care if you have no money,
continue not paying and people become ******.
Burning crosses in your front yard,
I'm a white boy and kind of a ******.
When you run out of your house,
your home gets a gasoline douse.
In white robes we walk the street,
we sure hate the dark meat.
We're grinding the ole ax,
we're KKK and hunting blacks.
The problem is they fight back,
so we just give them some killer crack.
Blood dripping from the heart,
dragged the carcass to the local mart.
Hunting animals is what I do,
then I cook them in my famous stew.
Whether a shotgun or bow and arrow,
could be a bear or a helpless sparrow.
Sometimes a dog, sometimes a cat,
maybe a mouse, maybe a cat.
I'm a hunter on the loose,
how I love to **** a moose.
I use the skins as a rug,
I just killed an annoying bug.
I use my trusty ax to chop off their head,
now they hang above my king sized bed.
How I love to use my awesome ax,
whether for the IRS, hunting or torturing blacks.

all my stop signs
     are draped with pearl necklaces
and my headlights
     caress wounded kittens
i am the dunce
     carusading thru the blues
the moon is emblazoned
     with indignation over
crowds of unemployed people

(nodody notices the white elephant)
     stealing
the hacksaw, the cookies, and all the money
     i saved for a haircut
all in all, a ***** is
     hitchhiking toward a pontiac
in the desperate desert sun
     counting
his thumbs with a switchblade


"anything temporary can be used for money reasons"

Hectored by the pit-a-patter
of frozen pellets, you might hear
these dented eaves wheeze and sneeze
lubricious comparisons, but
it's a thickly frosted fiction
that their bulbous white noses
look anything like eggshells.

In springtime's crick-cracking they will
however birth a frog with not
so princely disposition:
Hacksaw in hand, he'll eye
your roommate and that footlocker
where she keeps invaluables
of an oddly personal nature.

His plan is to hip-hoppity leave
you red-faced, trying to calm
this panicked friend with un-fairy
tales of a burglar amphibian
who muttered of moral decay,
mis-fabled crowns, and the strangeness
of saved fingernail clippings.

Snip a bit here and chop a bit there,
I could bounce off the walls but would anyone care?
Does nobody see what is happening to me?

If invisible is the new black, then I'm going back
because staying here is as useful to me
as a sack of wet fish.
Wish I had a pound for every rejection I've had,
every plea that I've sent
every time I've felt bad.

All I got's a headache from the face aches out there but why should I care,
two panadol confuse me, internally bruise me and then I'm okay.

Today,
will be different.

Shouting about to all of my homies  
Outlaw, Warsaw, even lil Hacksaw  
There's something afoot  
It's a real hot poppin'  
They say, WHAT  
I say, YEAH, They all say, NAH  
 
I said, something not right  
It's still not a stoppin'  
They said, Oh man  
I said, Oh man  
Everyone in da house shouted  
Oh man  
 
The building is on fire  
Everybody get on down  
Keepin’ da flow, at a very low key  
Get your self way out, spoke he  
Everyone in da house yelled, Okey-Dokey  
'Cause no one wants to be  
Miss USA, runner up, say WHO  
Nup  
 
Everyone in da house shouted, Oh man  
Oh, we bounced on out of there  
We be gettin' in nobody's way  
Uh-Uh  
We're not gunna pop, in someone else's fire  
Not today....

In 55 Bukowski wrote of severed *****
while Rosa Parks decided not
to sit in the back.
Not a hacksaw but a rusty tin can.
Can you imagine?

Here's a true story, mind you
I was negative thirty three years young
then when Emmett Till was killed.
"In God We Trust"

Fifty four years later
Iranian protesters shot,
the King of Pop drops dead.
If they knew it then,
Elvis would have had to do more
than just shake his hips

While Eisenhower played pocket pool
in line at McDonald's,
true stories fluttered from feather pens
turning page into prose page.

It started when he had brought a box
He’d bought, back home from the fair,
The size of an average tinder box
In brass, and embossed with care,
The scene was the site of a battlefield
Where the redcoats marched as one,
In the face of the French artillery
Looking down the mouth of a gun.

And on the right was a drummer boy
Who drummed to the marching feet,
He gazed ahead but his eyes were dead
As he kept up a steady beat,
A moment of peril embossed in time
When nations ruled by the gun,
The redcoats all in a staggered line
With the battle not yet won.

‘And how did you come by that,’ she said,
His wife, when he brought it home,
‘I should know better than let you out
With a pound, when you’re on your own.
The gypsies see you abroad, my lad
And they say, ‘Now there’s our mark!
They’d pick you out of a thousand folk
Out there, a-stroll in the park.’

‘It wasn’t a gypsy, Jen,’ he said,
‘But an old, sad military man,
Struggling on a pension for
His bread, as best he can.’
‘You’re just as soft as the next one, Bill,
They’d steal a beggar’s cup,
But now that you’ve got your tinder box
Let’s see, just open it up.’

‘I can’t, it’s locked with a type of lock
That I’ve never seen before,
It’s rusted on, and there is no key,
It’s a work of art for sure.’
He set it down by their rustic hearth
Where it looked so very fine,
A piece from their ancient history
Where the soldiers stood in line.

That night they woke to the distant sound
Of a battle, lost and won,
The sound of cheers, of clashes, tears
To the beat of a distant drum,
And Jen was lying there frozen as
She clung to her husband’s arm,
‘What have you brought on home to us?’
She cried, in her alarm.

The morning saw her attack the lock
With a hammer to no avail,
The lock, it might have been rusty but
Was solid, strong and hale,
And Bill said ‘Stop! You will ruin it,
There’s nothing there to hide,
I bought it more for the picture than
What might there be inside.’

Each night the sound of a battle filtered
Out of that tinder box,
The sounds of the muskets firing, of
Whizz-bangs and battle shocks,
And through it all was the steady sound
Of the little drummer’s beat,
It rose up out of the battleground
With the sound of marching feet.

They finally cut the lock away
With a coarse old hacksaw blade,
It took a couple of hours that day
So sturdy was it made.
Then Bill said ‘Your curiosity
Has made me wreck the lock,
So now, there’s nothing to stop you, Jen,
Just open up the box.’

The lid flew up and the sight she saw
Was enough to make her faint,
For there, the skull of the drummer boy
Lay with its coat of paint,
And blood, red blood was the skull in there
Though the teeth were pearly white,
A bullet hole in the frontal lobe
That had kissed the boy goodnight.

And folded there, but beneath the skull
Was the skin of the drummer’s drum,
Blackened, torn and beyond repair
It had sounded for everyone.
It’s buried now with the drummer’s skull,
It’s resting beneath a tree,
And never sounds, for its war is won,
It’s where it was meant to be.

David Lewis Paget

/ picked an iris from the garden / took a hacksaw to the petals / when i could have just picked them apart /

\ which garden? \ only one of its kind \ a blemish in the desert, a stubborn breakout of petulant colour \ under schrodinger's sun \ model's smiles so ugly betwixt the natural verdure \ i tell them this \ to save myself from perceived slights \ and she does, indeed, look slight \

/ the word "help" drawn in the sand / the rusting handle of the shovel burning hands / as i hack at stems swaying nonchalant / in the stinging wind /

\ from left \ to right / then left \ then right / before bleeding out on the flat palm of the tool -

\ a wren \ tar-black \ perches on a nearby tree \ shakes the dust off a wing \ and casts a shadow across our little oasis \ before opening its beak to song \ dragging more people into the dark will not help you find the light switch \ and other assorted platitudes \

/ so the model walks out into the desert / i follow / dragging her garden along / it's wrapped around my ankles / oh the irony in losing blood to the vines tightening / dragging across hot sand / and eventually it's all too heavy / so i collapse / breathing in the arid ground / skin turns as red as a bull's nightmare landscape / yet she continues to walk / as if nothing happened / is it the heat that leaves me melting away? / or the guilt? / in any case / i got caught in the trap i set for her / eyes close / and she is leaving...

                                                                ­                   leaving...


                                                    ­                                  leaving...
          
                                                                ­                                   left.

A field hand birth in sandal feet
The afterbirth is ocean skies
She braces sternum abreast to me
The golden wheat and flies

Worms slither laced living
Within her locks
The holy realm
Her hips
A pelvis snapped will drool more blood
Than a thousand razored wrists

I supped of tears
I cupped
I drank
I grinned a hacksaw’s gleam
I undress myself
Till I am only bone
And bathe in sewer’s stream

Dream not of drunk
Dream just this birth
The golden wheat and flies
My daughter birthed from crumbling womb
Beneath these ocean skies

Ah
If only I had some blade
To cut her cord to she
I suppose the only shears I have
Are my spit shined pointed teeth

Love is a gangrenous limb,
Mangled and raw,
Never healing, love is a metonym,
Fatal ifn't offed     with a hacksaw.

to the readers of fiction

you can
with a hacksaw
save most
of your leg
and its double.



writers of fiction**

was a man
bit a dog
and lost a tooth.

was another man
bit a dog.

same dog.

wasn’t a day
went by
the two
didn’t wake
to the howling
other.

lonely willows shivering in
the holy ether of wind
baubles hang and chime like
honey filling ear
drums

a convulsion of dreams
atonement for the muzzled
fornicator of reality

where men hacksaw
their legends from the
fabric of truth
purger themselves from
pulpits of egocentric
alters

carnivores of praise and
self-adulation

i want the humble salt
of hope, the naked and nervous
courage of overt happiness
and its ambition

i need fertile gardens
growing the seeds of humanities
gentler hearts, loftier ideals

not these amoral molten mouths
spewing ashes for symbols,
selling peepshows to win loyal
martyrs to empty causes,
bleaker ends

dreams are for the willows
i'll shiver no more
chiming only of my vision
suckling the honey of my own
bees

now...
how to walk like thunder?
talk like light?
live like the rivers,
who've drank all the rain?

the father touches down to draw squares for hopscotch.  every photo is a photo of silence.  the mother, for the weird kid in her sunday school class, is sewing one sock puppet to another.  it’s a lonely job but no one has to do it.  the neighbor has just borrowed a hacksaw and, earlier, a box of cake mix.  her brother is the boy all have heard explain how insects are sailboats.  as for the babies, they’ve been put on suicide watch for the actions of a single lookout.  how nearness, love.

the ****** boy is waiting for it to dry, it

being
the puppet’s
toothbrush.  his lover

a practitioner
of moral sadness

knows the body as a representation
of surgeries none perform
and the future
as historically
inaccurate.  where we’ve met before

I’ve narrowed down
to isolation.  was there I last lost mother

with her hacksaw and chair
dreamily approaching
a tire swing  
as if the human voice

on any land
letting go
of god

could raise
a tree.

Four men from the break of dawn
With axe, hacksaw and *****,
Back and forth swaying their head,
And with their mighty brawn
Were hacking down a giant factory
That took small space on earth
Nurtured by air, water, soil from its birth,
Finally it was razed with great victory.
It was a factory which produced oxygen
That could not be gauged by men.
It provided food and shelter
To many creatures without ever to falter.
Without asking for anyone's labour
To them it did unconditional favour.

After a few days came there many men
To build another giant factory again.
They with great vigour cleared the sod
Built a factory with bricks and iron rod.
It was a factory that took over large area,
Workers feared diseases in their trachea
For it ceaselessly vomited black smoke;
By its noise neighbours to their horror awoke.

I lay the shackles of time
at my feet
Every day/link a witness
to the futility
and the uncertainty
of the doom we are
determined to meet

It's my moment
to whorsip the silence
When the nothingness
rages deep within my
darkest soul

People speaking without
the vibrations of truth

Whose mental motions
are bound to the rusted loops of determination

The digital hacksaw bytes
the grooves of litany
sending shivers of silver through the cloud of crystal clarity

I lay the shackles that
denoted my existance
at my feet and step over
the finality forever

For silence will be my final refuge . Let me lay down in ground and pull the gray clouds over me and go to sleep forever

a forest – somewhere unfamiliar, sectioned
a cabin – noiseless mannequins stand at attention

the air reeks of dampening feces, but only in certain spaces.
drains masked in chipping red paint dangle like
loose ligaments on skinned pigs above rusted strobe lights.
their faces flattened and torn, arms swaying – minds motionless.
the walls barbed from previous failed experiments create sanity.
one hacksaw. three nails. two strands of hair.
three hundred sixty-five horizons.

the stars outside are starting to shine
and the director is feeling lightheaded.

both boys have the hiccups and
a slight infection of the hickies.

the cameramen hide in the restroom
hitting **** rips and bean dip.

all avoid the white couch
where the restraints wait.

Clinking links, hang from silvered cuffs,
jagged edges glisten in the blazing light,
sweat runs down the back,
from the hacksaw might.

Drops of blood imagined,
running down from my heart,
her words a dagger,
destroyed my new start.

Escaped a prison,
but waited too long,
my bird began to sing,
a brand new song.

Cinderblocks attached
to the brand new chain,
pad locked in place,
as I stand in the rain.

Stiletto blade digs in
leaving a thin red line,
that will burn and drain
in the salt water brine.

Crashing waves below
swallow chain and concrete,
followed rather quickly,
by the soles of my feet.

Dragged down below,
even only in my mind,
sunk into a pit of despair,
I will be hard to find.

Sweet Mary Jane hid a
hacksaw blade inside
a fudge cake.

Traditional Barmbracks ie.
(Irish: bairín breac), had a
ring, rag, pea and stick inset.

I got a secret note from the
baker, which she concealed
between two buttered slices.

Under a tiny cocktail tomato,
looking like a cherry, it said,
"Would you like to eat me".

i'm still trying to trace back a sudoku mistake...
how could i have made it...
it's not exactly the samurai / killer sudoku stratum...
i might not know,
exactly the order of the alphabet...
but at the same time i want to breathe...
so i'll write a little "impromptu"...
which this isn't... it has been festering like a wound
engaged in: giving a banquet to the whole
entourage of gangrene! of course: the ghost limb /
shank! don't be silly... gangrene associated
with the head is either a guillotined bottle-neck...
or... the lesser cousing: amiss...
of what would otherwise resemble:
the jaw that chatters, the hacksaw that bites...
but i made a mistake...
because i had "too much on my mind":
which is pretty much nothing...
i'm starting to question whether: primo...
i am to be qualified as a thinking thing...
and whether or not i'm not, quiet simply...
something empty: a vacuum with a: hello!
my name: if robert - call me bob sticker...
it's not so much a joke as... nothing more, either...
peacocking intelligence is...
the hiearchy structure is still "game"...
the poker is still: R-category...
but i guess i folded...
which is why i wondered as to why a sense
of *****... became a frivolous goosebump
of a sensation where they should be...
instead i found myself with a bulging
monsoon *****...
and this is not even a case of: when transgender
psychology tightens the grip on:
the common good - grammar...
gender neutral pronouns... what about the royal
we and one? we: the entourage...
one as all pronouns present...
i ****** up...
i blame it on the choice of notation...
the narrative should have read
Aa8 Bc9 Cc1 Cc7 Ac5 Aa5 Ca5 Ca7 Ca3 Ca3
on the usual gymnastics of...
but it wasn't working from this...

          A                  B                  C
   x     x     x     8     x     x     x     9     1
a x     x     x     x     x     7     x     x     x
   x     x     1     2     x     x     8     7     3
   6     x     9     x     7     x     x     x     x
b x     x     x     5     3     x     x     x     x
   x     3     x     x     x     x     5     1     2
   x     x     3     x     x     6     x     8     7
c 8     x     7     x     x     1     9     4     x
   1     x     6     x     x     8     3     x     x

why did i go for the Aa1 notation rather than
a A1(1) notation?
after all B8... b6... Bb86... P9 etc.

it's not like i'm bewildering myself
to solve the corona virus... either...
perhaps i'm just, "investigating"...
a small step for man...
one giant leap for mankind... but then that
is not true...

if you still read newspapers...
this is what a pedantic corner of a newpaper looks
like... journalism pumping public
opinion is one thing in the tabloid press...
quiet another, elsewhere...

for better or for worse:
this is the until: we part on... death can have its
mythology and personification with
scythes and a harem of shadows
that would replace the lava lamp for...
one of those atmospheric evenings smoking
marijuana... and telling each other...
how that's supposed to... exemplify *******...
which came prior to one of us trying
out a full-body b.d.s.m. gimp suit...
with a zipper for the genitals to: plucker out...
or some other ingenius monstrosity
of the bedroom...
but none of the prior...
it's not like these were ever... "fetishes" or...
were, even "somehow" driftwood in the unconscious...
seeing how others have explored these
avenues...

i'm not too sure where i went wrong...
call it a distraction call it a weather warning....
call it... just coming out from a stanley kubrick
omnibus - back to back oeuvre binge...
or some whacky said: some other...
friend of a friend...

the other narrative read as follows
Cb7 Ab7 Bc7 Bc3 Cc1 Cc2 Cc6 Cc5 Ab5 Ac5 Bc5 Bc2
Cb9 Cb8 Ca4 Cb4 Cb3 Cb6 Aa7 Ab1 Ab8
Ab2 Ab4 Bb4 Bb8 Bb1 Bb2 Bb6 Bb9 Ba3 Ba5 (Ac6) Ba1
Ca5 Ac2 Aa8 Aa6 Aa3 Aa9 Aa4 Ba4 Bc4 Bc9 Ac9 Ac4

i call this the parallel adventure of the the synonym:
me solving a sudoku puzzle is a bit like...
a bureucrat / civil servant sharpening a pencil...

a frenchman would have, a german would have...
written some existential narrative...
i wrote: why i solved one sudoku puzzle...
but didn't solve another...
because... thinking go in the way...
thinking about nothing -
origins reflexive... and nothing as expansive
as would be allowed via: origins reflective...

habitual preoccupations if not stressors...
one could allow oneself to watch paint dry...
but then one should allow onself to watch ice melt...
otherwise figure out a seat next to Heraclitus next
to a river... or a neat next to Narcissus beside a lake...
or a puddle...
or... a seat next to a stone that isn't a stone
that is a mountain with Sisyphus...
each one will do...

as one is expected to write such *******...
when one's shadow abandons one...
perhaps to even the scores of a diagnosis...
bi-lingual: ******-            evidence!
what force of wanting to keep the would-be
integrated blossom... who... rebelled and said:
i will retain my mother,
my tongue... and my skull...
hence this mongrel: i, i...
or what's the lesser mirror: the water, the glass...
the need for night, for shadow...
for timid time...
and the shared common threshold:
to bounce back from an omni-: in the litany of:
flu-like symptoms -
giving cursor for sponge-like...
lava roasted - poached squid brain burdened
episodes of the hominids... **** similis:
apes clapping and laughing playing backgammon
and confusing it with checkers... and checkers
with chequers...

queries: none applicable: queues? all...
primo cue? qua in quaestio: quo vadis?
a self-proclaimed deconstruction cascade of
the alphabet... none speculated...
trying to be overtly "smart" most anticipated...
a burden in-and-of-itself: stipulated...
a congestion of rhyme...
no couplets yes of everything, else: presented...

de profundis clamere ad te domine;
this is a razor's edge a drowning man would
grip onto... upon the sea...
this lingua mare...
and given this is not some lucky driftwood...
it's enough: to equal both the discomfort
from having written it...
as not having written it.

Its chain cut again…
   the demon is loose

Deep into the night,
  she hunts darker truths

The hallway’s back stairs,
  her favorite retreat

Pending daylight’s return,
  when her bite becomes weak

Then she staggers back wounded
  to shadows that call

Old blood trails lead silent  
  down that dark lonely hall

Where a door is rechained,
  and its lock fastened tight

Until a hacksaw appears
    —with the next moonless night

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

Its chain cut again,
   the demon is loose

Deep into the night,
  she hunts darker truths

The hallway’s back stairs
  her favorite retreat

Until daylight will threaten,
  and her bite becomes weak

Then she staggers back wounded
  inside shadows that call

Old blood trails now leading  
  to that dark lonely hall

Where a door is rechained
  and its lock fastened tight

Until a hacksaw appears
   —with the next moonless night

(Villanova Pennsylvania: February, 2016)

Do you wish?
For what your eyes saw?
Impossibility, blooded.
Clean?
Do you know?
The blinded hacksaw?
Is all that you're to be.