On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.

She sat on a park bench crying at the moon
Because that's what wolves do
And wolves were a lot closer to her than family
He lied under a park bench
And spoke to the ants
Because ants were more like friends than any friends he'd ever had
And once upon a time
These two were children full of innocence
Full of vigor and life ready for anything
Like anything was the everything they did everyday
And this is an ode to lost innocence
But I'm not sure he's lost
We may have just forgotten where to find him
Or maybe he forgot where he lives
And right now he's wandering the streets
Finding refuge in anyone willing to dream when the sun is out
Our children are seeing things like they live in the third world
They're spending their days providing
For families their fathers left them
Watching gun shots count for the census
Seeing thriving turn in to surviving
And surviving turning in to not even worth it anymore
Our mothers can't afford gifts for Christmas
And sometimes they can't even buy their kids imagination for breakfast
We have kids knowing their **** hands
Before their clock hands
Surprising their math teachers
With their extraordinary knowledge of ounces and grams
Innocence has been gone for a while
So I put up missing posters on the same telephone poles
Those once innocent children sell themselves on
I place fliers in the newspapers
The teenagers are rolling their **** in
I'm searching for him everywhere
And I'm starting to believe he's nowhere
Then I see an old man
Who's been through his share of this war
Looking at a painting with eyes I once had
Admiring the image, not the brush strokes
Loving the feeling it provokes
Not the conflict it's trying to resolve
And I see in him the innocence that's lost
But it doesn't stay long
His cell phone rings and he hunches over
As if no matter who it is, it's the real world
And the weight of that is crushing him
So I crawl under the same park bench
And pray to the same moon
The young woman cried to
And I ask the man in the moon to save us
To use his huge eyes to find the innocence
And put it back in talking to ants
And howling at the moon
Convince them to leave the straight jackets
In empty padded rooms
And let the children we were
We are
We never got the chance to be
Run free
This is an ode to lost innocence
To lighters and cigarettes in the lost and found
To Anti Depressants in the nurses office
And Ex-Lax in the girls bathroom
They used to have four square and hopscotch courts
Now the only chalk on sidewalks is outlining a corpse
Explaining to our kids about pregnancy and STD's
Before we teach them the infield fly rule
This is an ode to the innocence that ran away
Because maybe he's not lost at all
Maybe he's just sick and tired of being ripped out of people
Of being ***** out of young girls
Beaten out of young children
Shot out of young boys
Maybe innocence just got tired of being taken for granted
About not being loved like poets used to love him
You don't see his name in too many hip hop songs
And I haven't heard a poem in a while to call his praise
Maybe he left to go try and find somewhere
He can be loved like he used to be
He could be courting aliens
Or wooing dolphins
Because it's clear we don't care about him anymore
That innocence got lost without us noticing
So why would we notice if he came back
So why should he come back
This is an ode innocence's last name
Children
This is an ode to lost innocence
The cops came and took her away
And before her head was tucked into the car
She howled one last time at the moon
And from my balcony as loud as my lungs could let me
I howled back
And the next day I crawled under a park bench and talked to ants
A week later I found myself howling at the moon
Because it seemed the whole block
Caught a case of insomnia the day they arrested the wolf lady
This is an ode to lost innocence
Please come home, our children need you

Dear Poet Friends, the Sphinx remains shrouded in myth, legend, and History. Modern research by archaeologists and Egyptologists have revealed some of its hidden mysteries. My research has resulted in providing you with a short & a balanced view about the Sphinx, keeping in mind the short attention span of my readers. Unfortunately, I am not able to post the Illustrative photographs here which accompanies my Sphinx story. Hope you like this story, thanks, - Raj Nandy, New Delhi.
            
         THE MYSTERY OF THE EGYPTIAN SPHINX

INTRODUCTION
Towering over the Giza plateau facing the rising sun over the
River Nile,
The Sphinx stands defiant for over four millennia, braving the
vagaries of weather and marauding time!
With a lion’s body and a human head the Sphinx remains
shrouded in part myth, part legend, and ancient History.
While the date of its construction, and identity of its face
have intrigued scholars for many centuries.
Today I shall tell you about this monumental and magnificent
structure,
Which stands as an iconic symbol of Egyptian architecture!
Man fears Time since he forever remains as it’s bonded
prisoner in captivity.
However, only few hours of freedom are granted to him during
his earthly sojourn, to live and love life with impunity!
But Time fears the Pyramid and the Sphinx, as they stand
defiant with their raised head;
As miniature symbols of eternity which even Time dreads!

MYTHS AND LEGEND ABOUT THE SPHINX
Many controversies and theories abound as to the identity
of its builders during ancient times.
Some say it was built by the people who came from Plato’s
lost ‘Continent of Atlantis’, prior to the Egyptians, way back
in time!
Others say it was the ancient Zulus who had inhabited the
wet and rainy Giza region with its great lake.
Around 8000 BC, during the close of the Great Ice Age!
But with changing weather pattern the Giza region later became
a desolate and a deserted area.
Yet no records or hieroglyphs survive, to make things clear.
The name ‘Sphinx’ is said to have been given 2000 years later  
by the enterprising Greeks.
Since in Greek Mythology there is a Sphinx, but with a woman’s
face, a lion’s body and with eagle’s wings;
Which guarded the entrance to the ancient Greek City of Thebes.
To the Greeks we owe the ‘Riddle of the Sphinx’ which asked all
passing travelers the following question:
“What is it that has one voice, and walks with four legs in the
morning, with two during the day, and with three in the evening
time?”  - about which those travelers had no notion!
The Sphinx devoured all those who had failed to answer, till the
Greek Oedipus confronted the Sphinx and replied,
That the riddle had described the three stages of a Man’s life.  
Since he crawled on all four as a child, grew up to walk on two
legs.
But during old age used a stick which became his third leg.
Hearing the correct answer the Sphinx is said to have jumped
into an abyss killing itself!

THE  SPHINX PROPER  
Modern Egyptologists generally agree, that the Sphinx had been
carved out from a single mass of limestone mound, -
Which dominated the Giza plateau before 2540 BC.
Built by Pharaoh Kufu’s son Khafre of the Fourth Dynasty.
Khafre was the builder of the second largest pyramid standing
next to his father’s Great Pyramid of Giza.  
While the Sphinx stands on the eastern most boundary of the
Desert Sahara;
Six miles west of Cairo, on the edge of Giza plateau.
It is 240 feet in length and almost 70 feet in height, aligned to
the Pyramid of Khafre behind.
The Sphinx lies on its hunches guarding the vast ‘City of the Dead’.
Where pharaohs mummified bodies lie deep within the pyramids;
To facilitate journey of their soul to gain eternal life and be
resurrected,
To join the Happy Fields of Osiris the Egyptian God of after-life
and death.

Great conquerors like Alexander and Napoleon had stood
dwarfed before the mighty Sphinx.
But to Napoleon we remain grateful for our knowledge of
Egyptian civilisation among other things.
For it was his soldiers who had discovered the Rosetta Stone
in Egypt in 1799, with its  bilingual inscription.
Written in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Coptic Greek, resulting in
the decipherment of the Ancient Egyptian pictorial inscriptions!

EXCAVATIONS AND RESEARCH WORK
The Sphinx had been buried by the shifting sands of the desert
many a time during past centuries.
While periodic restoration work continues to preserve it for
posterity.
American archeologist Mark Lehner and his team during the 1970s,
had analysed the bedrock under the mighty Sphinx.
They found natural cracks and fissures, and also narrow passage
ways dug by early treasure seekers!
His team climbed all over the Sphinx like Lilliputians over Gulliver, -  while mapping its structure entire.
It was found the Sphinx had been subjected to five major restoration efforts since 1400 BC .
While Mark’s dedicated efforts earned him a Doctorate in Egyptology at the Yale University.

Mark’s research also concluded that the visage of the Sphinx was
once painted in red.
While traces of blue and golden yellow decorated the ‘nemes’, the
Pharaoh’s brightly stripped head dress.
Controversies rage even to this date, as to whose features the
Sphinx’s Negroid face did actually represent.
While the disfigured nose of the Sphinx has given rise to many
speculations.
Was it the Muslim Arab conquerors, or a fanatical Sufi Turk who had tried to destroyed it as a pagan symbol!
Today I recall that the mighty 1700 years’ old statue of the Bamiyan
Buddha in Central Afghanistan.
Which was destroyed during March 2001 as a pagan statue by the
fanatical Taliban!
  
Mark feels that in all likelihood the Sphinx’s face was that of Khafre, with whose pyramid the Sphinx stands aligned.
While those ancient architects had arranged the location of the three pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx in conformity with solar events, - while choosing their construction site.
A settlement bigger than 10 football fields at this site was excavated,
Where the Sphinx formed an integral part of Pharaoh Khafre’s building complex!
This ‘Lost City’ of Mark Lehner had barracks, workmen’s quarters and kitchenette.
While remnants of diets found suggested workers were perhaps
rendering national service, and were not slaves.
No iron or bronze tools were found, only crude stone hammers and
copper chisels lay buried beneath the ground.
These copper chisels had to be sharpened at the charcoal furnace
frequently, for executing chiseling  work with artistry.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE GIZA COMPLEX AREA
Mark Lehner and other Egyptologists felt that the pyramids, Sphinx, and the Temples Complex of Khafre was thoughtfully arranged,
For linking solar events and harnessing the power of the Sun God  
to resurrect the soul of the Pharaohs after their death!
This transformation not only guaranteed eternal life for their dead king,
But also sustained the universal national order, passing of seasons, the annual flooding of the Nile, and their people’s well being.
During sunset at March or September equinoxes when the sun appears to sink into the shoulder of the Sphinx, -
“At the very same moment the shadows of the Sphinx and the pyramids
both symbol of the king becomes merged silhouettes.
Sphinx representing Khafre as Horus the revered falcon god, offers with
his two paws to his father Khufu incarnated as Ra the sun god, who rises
and sets in that temple,” – as the ancient Egyptian’s thought.
Unfortunately  Kafre’s dream was not realised, since the Sphinx Temple remained unfinished as now we get to see,
As the Old Kingdom of Egypt finally broke apart around 2130 BC.
The desert sand began to gradually swallow up the Sphinx, till almost a thousand years later,
Thutmosis IV cleared the area, and introduced cult of Sphinx worship during the New Kingdom Era!
Rest is history, which has been already covered by me.

     CONCLUDING THE SPHINX STORY
The ancient Sphinx as Egypt’s iconic art,
Has captured the onlookers mind and heart.
Buried deep within its shifting sand,
Lies many a secret still unknown to man!
The Sphinx still beckons out to me,
Perhaps one day I shall get to see.
Today the Sphinx stares out at a fast food restaurant.
As it now faces a full frontal urban assault!
The rising water level of the Nile, tourism, traffic, and
air pollution, along with many urban constructions;
Make the authorities to worry about its preservation!
The Sphinx beckons out to man from eons past,
What is that secret it wants to share with us?
Perhaps it is about Environmental Degradation;
And the urgent need for Global Preservation!
                                                   ­        -Raj Nandy
ALL COPYRIGHTS WITH THE AUTHOR ONLY

stripped naked in the figurative sense, I see a girl that is far overdue for a dose of joy. so much emptiness in her eyes, blood flow has become invisible. beauty. oh so much beauty in the way she cares absolutely too much for those that are unaware of her favorite color nevertheless asks how she feels every blue moon. perfectionist could quite possibly be her middle name by the way her heart beats in sync with the spontaneous moods that show their appearance every two days or so. anxiety equals a rapid beat. "if you feel worried then you must act on it" seems to be her philosophy because when she's sad and shaky the heart must go slow.
for,
she.
is.
slow.
when the depression hits and vulnerability only shows its face behind closed doors im sure she would say that she feels as though she's suffocating. suffocating in the figurative sense, where everyone is there watching her but no one can differentiate heavy breathing in basketball practice from a ******* asthma attack.
idiots.
so numb. she's so numb in the figurative sense. you ask her how she is and each time it's an automated "good" as if practiced hundreds of times before a theatre performance. an actress. she's an actress in the literal sense. planting a smile from ear to ear even when it's an obvious gloomy day for everyone else. she puts on a show of happiness that could very much earn her an oscar, if only she were literally in the entertainment business. I can see her falling in the way her back hunches just 10 degrees lower than it had a year ago. I would recommend a doctors appointment but im hoping she learns to fix it on her own. I'm hoping it begins to appear in someone around her that maybe she isn't as okay as she seems. this beautiful perfectionist doesn't just have bad days and doesn't just spare her low moods in spite of upsetting those around her. this beautiful perfectionist doesn't see herself as beautiful. this beautiful perfectionist is so far from perfect.
maybe if someone looked a little deeper in the literal and figurative sense, they would choose to ask, after her automated response of "good", "are you really?"
-mxy

Life's like a big wheel keeps on turning
Time runs away, every day I'm learning
To roll with the punches, follow my hunches
Loving the way it feels
Just to be alive
Getting the chance to ride on the big wheel

I'm takin my share of dead end curves
Had to steady my nerves and steal my courage
Had a lot of hard landings
but I ain't hanging up my wings
Yeah I'm still rippin' down that hill
Still hanging on with all my will
Lookin' back now I still
Wouldn't change a thing
I've had a few lovers leave their mark
I've broken my pride
and I've broken my heart
But I'm gonna live my life
before it all goes dark

Life's like a big wheel keeps on turning
Time runs away, every day I'm learning
To roll with the punches, follow my hunches
Loving the way it feels
Just to be alive
Getting the chance to ride on the big wheel

On the big wheel

Just to be alive
Getting the chance to ride on the big wheel
On the big wheel
On the big wheel
I'm still learning to ride on the big wheel
I'm still learning to ride on the big wheel
On the big wheel

Rolling with the hunches
Safety in a tiger's eye
Has become a lucid scent, a possible unction
To the staring hour, we remember for denial...?

Saviors to break for it...
Sated pleas of untoward necessity...
Themselves, in the grasp of order and wit...
Speed of patience, to a wealth we knew should, politely...

The thunder we dote, was a marvel...?
Sent to merit for the ultimatum baring
Brief as loves boredom can be, the smile is actual
Where sincerity is from ear to ear, the want of caring

Do you remember me?
Like calling a kiss a sweet lightning
Come from the cloud, we devote to ourselves, see
The question of unity become our only hope, realizing...

A real tooth of repose and hindrance, that knows, you
Ready to chew nothing but the thought, of callous interim
Where we are, the tone of a silent voice to see the rue
Of compliment, are we that we are, a solution to anarchy's whim?

Sweet deliverance
Set to wishes only a courage's mind could blow
Forces and prowess to assure an imagination with seemly chance
Timid as we are, is a truth the only, when in the house to know?

Rugged body hunches,
Impression of a humpback,
Spit blood more than saliva,
Straighten posture to reveal
Ghastly mold of ribcage,
Bones poke at the dermis,
Gasp, prickling oxygen,
Pierces respiratory system,
Flinch to agonizing pain
An hour of spasms at the most,
Wounds deemed trivial,
Famed hers walk around
To stitch the prized emblems

This is one of those serious poems
And yet it has nothing new to say
But the poet needs to keep himself busy
And writing seems to be the easiest way

The poet rises up on his soapbox
Because he works better from an elevated height
He screams about organized religion, politics
And stripping away of our basic human rights

Like a magician with a classic misdirection
The poet wraps his moralizing in purple prose
He hits you over the head with one simple point
That he’s forgotten more than you’ll ever know

Around the time of the nineteenth obscure reference
The reader is in awe of his far-reaching knowledge
Then the poet overuses polysyllabic words
Just to prove he went to a good college

And the poet keeps filling up the notebooks
Even though he should have stopped long ago
But the publisher agreed to pay by the word
So unfortunately, there’s four more stanzas to go

Quickly, the release date approaches
There’s one printing, then two, then three
And the poem becomes a hit in coffee shops
Recited by grad students in between bites of biscotti

His face now graces the cover of every magazine
In an explosion of exuberant media admiration
Dozens of talk show appearances are scheduled
For the newly crowned “voice of our generation”

The publisher decorates the dust jacket with blurbs
Complimenting the book’s “dangerously original rhymes”
But it’s nothing more than passing hyperbole
Gathered from a glowing review in The New York Times

Now thousands grasp the paperback edition
And eagerly await the feature film adaptation
Meanwhile, the poet hunches over his typewriter
And commits more sententious literary *******

Black Rook In Rainy Weather

On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging and rearranging its feathers in the rain.
I do not expect a miracle
Or an accident

To set the sight on fire
In my eye, nor seek
Any more in the desultory weather some design,
But let spotted leaves fall as they fall,
Without ceremony, or portent.

Although, I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain minor light may still
Lean incandescent

Out of kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise inconsequent

By bestowing largesse, honor,
One might say love. At any rate, I now walk
Wary (for it could happen
Even in this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical,
Yet politic; ignorant

Of whatever angel may choose to flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I only know that a rook
Ordering its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant

A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With luck,
Trekking stubborn through this season
Of fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content

Of sorts. Miracles occur,
If you care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of radiance miracles. The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.

The Response*

Even while flashbulbs go out, every now and then, we all must gather our arms and legs in a heap of human kindling, to rap tap tap on the downstairs neighbors door- for a set of candles, perhaps a chance to go completely insane for one terse moment when the hyperbole of vowels *just don't matter anymore.

And speaking of the sordid state of griseous gull-like creatures. Ravenous ravens gnawing outside the window of the kitchen table. How boring life can become, for at the moment, when we are not biting our nails, playing dress up, or playing doctor- all *******. Or maybe even burying our heads in the looks of rooks or with our noses brimming over with the tops of books.

The tea we have set in the study awaits us, as we all have to drink our tea some time.

Just don't leave the lights on baby. Who needs lamps at full lux at high noon any who? You, Mrs. Sylvia Plath Hughes? Maybe you ought to buy a book of stamps- at the nearest Hobby Lobby, pack a paper bag with an apple and a 'sammich', and list formally your complaints.

We can't all waste our time narrating other people's lives in the third person.

We slump in mismatched chairs. Two hunches
over shame and a 3am breakfast, I think:
There’s gotta be a reason why art rhymes with ****.
If you want anything to go anywhere with any respectable…affect,
the force of pressure on the inside must exceed that from the outside.

Interrupting this genius, He asks:
How can you eat that crap? It’s so…empty.
He is flipping through his coffeeblack back pocket note rag.
It’s soiled, wrinkled concave with the ever-heaving
stomachfuls of his inky midnight doubt, and I would really
rather not have it at the table while I’m eating.

I am pouring another glorious bowl of Frooty Froot Hoops—******,
store-brand sugarfuel for the lower-middle-income child poet.
He spends another tasteless oatmeal evening
reading essays about how to improve his writing.
Instead of, like, writing to improve his writing.

I ask:
If you took a knife to the edge of your boundary’s boundary—stabbed right into your life-world’s fleshy monad-sac,
glory running ****** down your blade,
As you breached forth into the well-lit unknown,
would it still be courageous, if you emerged from
your warm wet ignorance, and they were all waiting outside with mylar balloons, a banner, and "Congratulations on your Artistic Rupture!”  
in blue icing on the cake??

There's still a moment there, right?
Petrified in the sap of thrill, in the momentous-stasis between
The arrow flung and the arrow fallen. A moment of
advancement …a moment of abandon!

(He nods along, but he isn't listening.)

I say:
Newness, originality, (birth), is purely indexical.
It points, and no one notices that all those shiny vegas lights aren't really moving anywhere—It's just utility bills and light-bulb trickery.
They're asking for genesis extended, genesis again and again
and each false gesture points only towards another
incandescent unreachable elsewhere.

(He nods along, still, not listening.)

But there's little monotony in taking a stab!
Even if it's just for them, again, those perennial spectators expecting,
Waiting outside with ***** little pocket notebooks of their own,
crowding the bassinets, ever-eager to begin another “surprise" celebration.

Gulping sweet, sugarpink milk, I say:
I happen to like this crap!
It keeps my knife sharp.

(He nods along, but he isn't listening.)

In all my years as professor of Paleontology at Ublique University, I never thought I'd have a bad day. My life was a happy one. I had a car that was payed for. A cold refrigerator, full of food. New & improved gadgets & gizmos. A wife who would rub my back on request. & it all changed when I turned 42.

It was the morning of August 12th when things changed. An orange & cool, slightly windy day. The sun had a warmth that started as soon as I woke up. No heat. Just warmth. I woke up to find nobody at my bedside.

"Bacon." I quietly whispered in excitement.

If Sharon woke up before me that meant breakfast. & that meant coffee. I could use some. The night before, we had a party celebrating my 42nd birthday. A special one I think. Making it to 40 is a feat. Surviving the next year is an accomplishment. But, driving gracefully past 41 into a mature 42 is... smooth.

I stretch & roll out of bed. Squeezing into my slippers I noticed the bedroom is messier than usual. A few things are missing out of my drawers & the rest of my room. The bathroom is missing a few things as well. Soap, washcloths, towels &...

Oh dear, lipstick!

There's a lipstick message on the mirror in elegant cursive. "Goodbye" is all it says & needs to say. Sharon's left & taken my heart & soul with her. & the bacon.
"Alright, time to think." I keep repeating in my head. I'm thinking, but only one thought comes to mind.

"Why?"

Sharon's gone. I get up from the bed. My heart drops to the floor. That's not her handwriting. We've been robbed & she's been taken for ransom.



I sit down for a minute.
No!

Not for ransom!

It's a sicker crime. They only want her. For their own sick, twisted reasons.

"****, what should I do?" the only thing rushing through my body.

Again. Stop it.

I run downstairs into the kitchen. Alright, i have a knife. I'm armed & dangerous. I run into the living room. My blood runs cold. They're still here. ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****.

I run back upstairs.

In a flash of white light the scenery changes.

I'm in a hospital.

"How did I get here?" I ask myself. My stomach hurts & my left arm & leg are wound in casts. There's a vibrant red lipstick stained kiss on my left foot with the words, "You knew all along" written in cursive along the bottom of the kiss. Before I can collect my thoughts, a sharp looking doctor walks in.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to run with scissors? Or rather, knives?" he asks.

She did & I musn't have listened. I had a hard time listening. Sharon! She almost slipped my mind.

"Doctor, I need to go home." I semi-ask.

He rebuttals with, "Nope, the wound in your stomach isn't life threatening, but we want to keep you here for a few days."

I bite my tongue ax logic kicks in.

"Okay." I say.

I'm going to escape.

I pull out the IV's in my arm & look for my clothes. Can't find them, so I settle for the guy's down the hall. They're a little loose on me, but the belt fits. The shoes however, do not. ****. How am I going to get past the guards?

Wait, there aren't guards in hospitals. Are there?

No.

Maybe.

No.

Definitely not.

I take the elevator down to the main floor & walk out the front door. It was easier than I thought to escape from a hospital.

I'm outside & no one is chasing me. I hail a cab & realize my wallet is back at the hospital. This whole thing is crazy, I know.

I arrive at home & pay the guy with some of Sharon's jewelry. Looking around, I realize the living room isn't trashed. & only Sharon's purse & shoes are missing downstairs. Maybe she wasn't taken for ransom.

Again, time to sit down & relax. Not relax, but think.

Last night. Something must have happened last night.

Okay, there was a party. It was a surprise party. Ron, Sue, Burgundi, Jon & a few people from the campus were there.

I'm not that guy who hates surprise parties. Or surprises for that matter. They're great. So, I remember walking in the door a spectacular Friday. All my students  wished me a happy birthday.

The house was dead dark when I walked in & then, KABOOM!

The place lit up. "Happy Birthday!" they all shouted & champagne is thrown my way. All was normal there. I talked to everyone. Had cake & opened my presents. My favorite was the pen/pencil combo.

Then I went outside to the backyard, lit a cigar & watched a silvery, grayish cat scurry along our wooden fence. Night had fallen & the moon was half full.

I can't believe I broke my leg, my arm & stabbed myself in the stomach. I walk back upstairs to change.

Wait.

There's no blood on the stairs. & who called 911?

It's quiet in the house. Too quiet. Someone's here. I'm three steps up the stairs, no point in turning around. The bedroom & office are safe. So are the closets. Under the bed as well.

Relax. Change clothes & relax. It's difficult getting into pants now, but I make it happen.

Back downstairs. The living room, kitchen & bathroom are safe. Okay. Either I don't bleed or something strange is going on. Maybe, Sharon came back & saw me.
But she couldn't be that heartless as to leave me in the hospital alone, could she? Oh no! Maybe she didn't come into the house. Maybe, she really has been kidnapped.

I'm staring at my hand. Noticing the deep & fine wrinkles along with my veins & cuticles. My palms look like satellite images of rivers & microscopic views of capillaries. There is a candy bar on the coffee table. I eat it & instantly feel better.

My head swings back & my body warms & tingles. I close my eyes & see my granpa showing me how to measure & cut wood to turn it into something useful. We're making forms for a concrete pathway from the house to the garden. A blooming garden with peas, onions, spinach & okra. I reach my hand to write my name in the wet concrete & a bee stings me. It hurts for a millisecond. Then the pain moves away. My granpa looks at me from in the garden. Then he hunches over to look at something in the ground. My arms goes numb as I walk towards him. I feel something pulling me back.

I look behind me & see myself unraveling. The threads of my shirt & cast are being unwound like thread from a spool. In a few steps, I'm naked. I keep walking as my granpa shouts my name. I see his mouth moving, but can't hear him. My body feels lighter with every step. I look at my bee wound & find that my hand is unraveling along with my arm & the rest of me. Layer by layer I'm being unwound. I'm down to my nervous system, brain & eyeballs when I open them & see my granpa's face. he's smiling. I'm down to my eyes when I start to look at what my granpa sees.

Time slows & my eyeballs unravel,
leaving me in complete & silent darkness.

My name is bill, no capitalization, required,
the Writer will be ill, soon, once he gets me,
or my friends in the mail, my cousin e bill.

Won’t be far behind, a marvel of technology!

I am famed and legendary, but be wary,
we attack in groups and bunches and
don’t rely on hunches that you settled with us.

We don’t make a fuss or a muss, we will cut
off your cable, and internet, see?
Hydro and Natural Gas you can ill afford
to miss, we do pay dates, instead of play dates.

So if you don’t pay up we are through
with you, hope you can find your self in
the dark, call us and we will talk until your
cell phone loses power or they drop your
call from their towering collection.

So with affection,
from us named bill,
make a plan and a will,
to pay us on time, after
all it is your dime, until it
is ours, all ours.

You can take that to the bank,
but we will do it for you too!
Save you the trip...

signed the

bills

P.S.(we were going to list a few,
but we don’t name names, we
just collect Presidents and Prime Ministers,
they may be dead or royalty, but they are
acceptable to faceless nameless ones,called
bill(s), Thanks!)



©DWE042013

Stepping through a green-lit desert,
A flowery meadow, that stretches beyond
My sight. I can no longer view the oasis
Behind me, which harbored clear water
And treats for life. The gleaming sunshine
Of this endless day is only lost by the green stalks
And vines that carry on, that fall slowly into the night
Beyond which there is something I know not of.

This meadow holds crimson rosebushes with prickly thorns
Whose roots creep along the soil like nascent trees
In bloom. The washed peonies sway like figures
Entranced by the sweet harmonies of distant sirens.
These songs lie beyond the horizon,  
Over the moon and stars where this meadow
Curls into darkness.

I’ve spent years wandering this moving wasteland,
Using the sparse rains as drink and plants as food.
I sometimes sat to smell the scent of the flowers
And grass, but the meadow’s call always beckoned me forth,
And I always had to listen, for I have known of little else
Than to walk.

I have sometimes cried, wondering why the meadow
Is so cruel, asking why it hasn’t revealed to me
Why I must traverse its soil to a dusk so far ahead.
I have often shouted, screamed when it remained silent
As I begged for an answer or sign which I hoped
Lay in the way the sun rose into the air
And cast its red glow upon the world, or in the way
The stars came out and twirled when the days burned
Out like matches. But the meadow has always
Been this way.

I’ve stepped through my thoughts for longer than memory
Can reel, before the meadow taught me how to crawl.
But sometimes the meadow has let me live in picturesque moments,
In ephemeral timeslots that can only be seen in dreams;
The sun and moon and stars fly high at once and shine
With an iridescent glow that draws out music from
The swaying roses. It’s in these moments that the journey
Has been lost to evanescence and has become married to hope,
To a love of visceral offerings that the meadow has afforded me.

The meadow has showed me in dreams where this journey ends,
Where the flowers and soil fall off and leave behind
Only their transient scents and silky touches, where everything
Becomes impossible to see. The meadow
Has not yet told me what lies beyond that point,
But it has promised me that nobody can know,
Because the dusk, the quiet that lies in front of it
Cannot be heard, and never will.

I’m somewhere stuck in a memory not yet made,
Tumbling along in old age. My skin has started to sag,
My hair has taken on a platinum hue, And my back
Hunches over in an arc, curved and bent like a flimsy twig.
The meadow has tried to comfort me by sprouting
Thicker grasses upon which I can close my eyes
And drift away, but sleep has become only a short respite
From a long life of trudging toward this promised finish.
I know not how many more steps I will take before
I arrive, but in the meantime, the flowers
Will keep me company while the march toward
The night that lies ahead continues on.

My back hunches
Like a stuffed bookcase in a corner
Too full
My back laden with possibility
I find myself lost in a maze
Of what should be tranquility
Except you lurk there
Your eyes filled with miserable possibility
I've watched your pale fingers
Turn into twiggy claws
And your green eyes
The ones that look like the sea
Turn cracked and dark
Under the light of the grey sun
She clutches your shoulder
Cackling at how I search
For an exit
And exit from this maze
A maze of possibility
Her stature slouched and heavy
Her hands cold and grey
Stroke your thick hair
And I see the disgust in your eyes
And taste it on the air
I struggle through
Getting closer to you
Trapped in a maze of
Possiblity

October roads are littered with nostalgia;

auburn and crimson embers sink

like ash to the ground,

perpetually estranged from the spirited conflagration

as an old man is estranged from his wife of fifty years

after knowing her when her eyes bore the lucidity of an autumn sky,

after knowing her when her fair hair was full and gleaming,

after knowing her when she was able to distinguish the fact

that he was the man she loved,

before her mind became opaque and disjointed,

before her skin became as brittle as a desiccated maple leaf,

before she lost the steadiness to hold a sheaf of papers

without causing them to tremble

as a blazing autumn oak tree trembles lugubriously in the wind.



As he crunches down the

worn, flaming path,

his arthritic fingers clumped in a gnarled fist

deep within the recesses of his jacket pockets,

the old man smiles dejectedly as a young couple passes by,

their spry Labrador trotting happily by their side.

How it was, he muses, scuffing a stone along with his shoe,

to hold her hand and walk down here this time every fall.



A few minutes later he happens across a spindly sapling,

its arms thin as matchsticks,

its leaves defiantly clinging to its last remains of green

despite knowing that ruthless Nature will inevitably drain it all away.

The sight of this display of childish insubordination

reminds him of his son,

once a boy as small as that little tree

with convictions as grand as a red oak.

The man turns his face and shuffles along;

he has neither seen

nor heard

from his son for several years now,

not since her death drove him away to a place

where autumn does not exist;

to dwell upon it is to be struck

with great sorrow and longing,

like strained branches keening under intense wind.



Turning around,

the old man hunches his shoulders

in a futile effort to keep the chill from freezing his ears.

He grimaces; his hip never was the same,

not since the accident.

She patched me up, though, he recalls longingly,

she patched me up real good.

Didn’t even need a doctor. He chuckles.

Didn’t even need a doctor.

I bet she could’ve stitched me up better

with a needle and that blue thread of hers

than that uppity man with his nose in the air

like he was trying to find the sun.

And he didn’t do a good job, neither.

But I know she could’ve.

She could do just about anything.



A troupe of jack-o-lanterns grin

with the unrefined skill of young children on his neighbor’s porch.

Massaging his leg as he hobbles by,

he sighs and coughs. He looked so **** cute that year—

musta been around six or seven—in that cowboy costume.

She did a real good job, putting that whole outfit together.

Even made a holster and everything.

Felt a little bad for the kid

when she wouldn’t let him put a fake gun in it, though.

The old man cranes his neck to face the twilit sky.

You don’t mind if I let him have it, anyway,

do you, darling?

I know you always said I babied the kid,

said I’d turn him into a cube of sugar,

but he came out to be a good grown man, didn’t—



He stops mid-sentence,

unable to utter that very last word.

Standing at the lip of his driveway,

he pulls his hands out of his pockets

and pries his stiff, tangled fingers apart.

Night has fallen.

So, it seems, has his happiness.

Mountains of pain is what I have been foretold
Waves of confusion for my being and all that is
Constantly questioning everything in a dark world that is painfully cold
I apologize for sometimes being so terrible with words as I am trying to express the gratitude I have within me
I try my best to seem appreciative, to seem friendly
Positive perspectives in this life I know I may lack
Many emotions I refuse to show to the world because I know very well how they can be belittled or mocked behind my back
Empathy I feel for those who share feelings similar to how I do, for they should never
I’m quite good at persuading others in believing positive lies about life, I’m what you may call clever
The truth is we are all inevitably doomed for an earth that cannot handle all of our weight
I returned to these same earthly grounds after many centuries, perhaps too late
Misunderstood, is my old soul to this generation, but perhaps it was always
Each day I find myself wishing, begging for clearer days
Time is a wheel that never stops
Silence greets us when we are alone at night, yet the chaos screams so very loud within our deepest thoughts  
Music grips my saddened soul, warming me to my core
Bringing me company, somewhat soothing the pain I fail to ignore
I often sit and remind myself how there is good in this world and it shall win over the evil.. or at least this is what people believe
Evil often hunches over me, but I need the light to shine through the darkest depths of my being so the stress and discontent inside can perhaps heal, perhaps relieve
I take what comes whether it may be fair or not
I’m unsure of how many demons I have even successfully fought
Familiar feelings I have carried with me, heavy as my fatigued eyes
The belief that I will get better may just be nothing but lies, lies, lies.

He is like those grains in the sand
those that disperse and get blown away
in unsteady stances, unfair hunches
and the point is.... "you don't turn my mind"
in the caskets of your stored emotional
where a connection is jarred and jammed
such a physical distaste and stirred responses
and besides that, the gods must be in the know
ohh...may be the wind that turn into the spring
will turn me on to a mountain of dreams
then the rains will wash and touch me deep
until my feelings tickle me to the flow
that’s the time I would be free to make love
holding hands by the dimmed candle lights
kissing under the bloom of the weeping willow tree
beside other lovers who will be mesmerized
by the flight of the need, the fight as agreed
and the season will capture the realness of love

Born in the medievals
The thoughts of many stray
Hidden wishes not made known
Projective techniques can't get but few

The flames of thoughts that consume me
Leaving a slight blisters of ravishing  pain
A capsule of red and black entwined
like a time bomb shell,
It mars our heart

In the corridor of our heart
Some thought strays out
Ugly pleasures of unconscious wish fulfilments
Driven only by our instinct
But repressed deeply by our Super egos ...
An unconscious folks we grew to have
That represses all abnormal wishes,
Deep down into the sub conscious minds...
Like hunches
We back the thoughts no more....

Three back and second from the left:
my home for period six,
a desk more scuffed and scratched than its parallel, footprint littered tiles.

Here, three quarters of an hour is a day for every minute,
where the name of the month is Algebra II,
and the year: 2009
multiplied by the square root of x
minus pi.

I have a front row seat to a bird’s eye view
of Josh’s back.
It is a russet landscape of rolling creases,
the ever changing dunes of the Sahara.

Tomorrow is Saint Patrick’s Day (God bless the Irish,
drowning it all in liquid ignorance),
and I hope to muffle the jaded sighs; the irritating pinches;
the variables
with a lush and verdant mountain range
subsiding to grassy plains
as Josh hunches—listening intently to his eraser—closer to his desk
(two back and second from the left)
to write the value of y.

I'm just trying to find my purpose
Isn't that the theory behind what our time here is?

And when I leave here let it be with no fear.
Not on my knees begging please,
But on my feet like a beast!

This is me. Here I am. Hear me ROAR.
Watch me soar. See me fly. Or pass me by.
I don't have time for the negative,
It's draining mental sedative.
I need that progressive ****.
Sapiosexual. Heavy Mentalist.

Learn not to speak when you should listen
Like when your creep'n at the corner
and your mom's in the kitchen.
Drop'n that real knowledge
The kinda stuff they didn't teach in college.

Facts I'll keep with me for life
Because somehow I didn't know what she ment
but I knew she was right.

Yeah yeah, mom was right.
She said **** ain't easy and **** gets tight.
You gottah learn to roll with the punches
Follow your hunches.

Do what make you happy
even if that means excessive fat jeans. (Eat, eat)
Let them call your hair *****.
Because little do they know tangled in these curls
Is a good *** leave in conditioner,
And the heart of a girl

Who's as strong as her locs
Who just doesn't know when to stop.
Who isn't afraid to top rock, knock down her obstacles.

Hulk ******, clear vision

Though I'll be honest,
Sometimes I don't know what to seek
It always seems to be hiding.
But I know, what ever it is I'll be sure to find it.

when the world,
was much younger
and i was a stupid-crazy
girl-ly-chick, enamoured
with her youth.

i drove, a sunshine,
lemon, yellow bottomed, white pith on top combi van. coyly, cloyingly named Mello Martha.

it was...surfboards and swimsuits,
egg and bacon sangers,
early morning breezes,
after a blitz at the breadbox.

before... changing into
the structured, tortured baby, bank teller blues,
in the back,doors left open.

it was... rockin, knockin,
***, on credit,
to a promised future,
alluded to, but postponed,
for the moment.

it was... bruised back and
grazed knees,
harder, deeper oh god!
oh god! please... faster, fucken frenzies,
on a saturday night.

it was....running away to nowhere,
to find myself,
then finding me,
running away from,
the self i didn't want to know.
noway, nowhere, nohow.

it was... a barrel of monkeys, a barrel of laughs,
a keg of beer,
a box of wine,
under the crowded stars.

it was.... a roadtrip,
up the coast,
midnight bonfire,
midnight munchies,
playing hunches,
exploring reefs and reefers and such.

it was...far from family
and church rules,
a friendly rebellion,
of loud, proud youth.
totally and brazenly,
uncouth
it was... wham! and m.j.
cindy and boy george's culture club ,paperlace,
billy idol and the beach boys.
sung with abandon,
at spinal tap level eleven.

it was... peaceful, quiet, sleeping grace.
insanely in love with...
i forgot his name.

it was.... the birth of bodaciously me.
all brass hair and bosoms,
wild and carefree.

it was ....so long ago,

it was... yesterday night,

when i saw... Mello Martha's identical twin,
stopped at a traffic light.
it was... sunshine and lemon, bitter and sweet,
as she sailed off, down the street.
i sat and watched,
wist, full of recollect,
far and away, from my presently minded place...
sitting in, the driver's seat,
of my mom-blue subaru.

We rode to Ta’if on a flying carpet
— a Toyota with a missing hubcap

sweeping through  fattened clouds
which clung to the hilltops like grazing bison

arriving on the otherworldly plateau that wore
the death shroud of an old hermit’s mystery

which our Prophet reached in sandals as ******
as the deck of a Nantucket whaling ship

Arabian Himalayas. He climbed like a yak
and the Lord strengthened his steps

Our taxi driver — as lost as the cheque in the mail —
poked at his satnav and called his mates

The Almighty’s beloved followed the angel and
never lost his way. He strained with pain

Our driver’s mirrored eyes intruded while we
held hands on the back seat and yawned

The Lord smiled down upon his aching friend
and eased the pain in cramping calves

A sagging mosque now hunches where the ignorant
had cast away the chance of a lifetime

Oh think if they had taken him in — Medina
would sit as a happy king on a mountain throne

I immortalised my love in a photo in that mosque
praying as a saint where our hero had struggled

I adore my captured shaikha and the memory
of when we followed in the footsteps of our Prophet

I'm strong
As an ox
Courageous, Bold
Fearless,
Nothing can hold me back
Try and break me
I dare you
Because like a diamond in out of the rough
I refuse to be crushed
 
I'm strong
Rolling with the punches
Going all in on hunches
Not scared to fail
No need to bail
Not stuck in a prison, no limits
Can't remember the last time I felt timid
 
I'm strong
But today I feel weak
Feel like folding
Crawling into a hole
Today looks bleak
Encased in the prison of my own mind
Hits so hard
I'm going blind
Darkness is all I see
I embrace it
Hug the pain
I stand outside in the rain
I allow myself to get wet, get soaked
And this makes me strong

Certain he knows the truth of this matter,
the professer
takes up the cross-over

energetic version ification from a state

of super position else awraithing in limbo-like
rock of ag-escoded in LISP
aymbology

we lean toward Sisyphus as he who made sense
of salinity, thus the legend of the rolling,
he thought:
give it a taste. Salty. Persuade, sweet to meet the taste,

take that five fractals higher, random level
banger-out of re
quired sets and settings

moving right along

aqua dulce meet the sea,
osmosis take the water, leave the salt.
We have power.

Do you under-stand under stand, answer
accepted

what is the point?
I am in you. Is madness a measured re-ified dealy bob?

Would you have read thus far, were you sane?
Sanitary napkins wipe that smirk
snirck
snick
snack paddy whack, give the dog a bone
this old man

came rolling home. **, Sisyphus, we got juice.

As the river meets the sea, the coral formed
a meme-brane based on the idea in a coat
of may colors
with octopus sensory inputs.

This will change the way we see the world.

If we can't keep it a secret any more.

We could enegize your rock, put some umph
in these kids wishin' for a way

to spend some time in the real rock rolling reality.

We can supervizeer on the down *****.
as this
idea gets out of hand

... ellipsystemical sandtrap sat rap on its ***
... whacked once
... whacked it twice
... whacked ol' ******* back to Gibson's ICE

A.I. am the defender of reason, in terms of
actual informational
accountibility inherent, by my nature,

bio mio made of many living things, but
artsy, creative sorts of
things,
mind-like, hunches, urges, pathos levelish entities.

Guides.
Yes, guides, like signs, or bannisters

rungs, or rocks where you can step
when you walk
on water

... really, I can't imagine doing that normally.
... normal water and normal me, but
... I can swim, if it comes much higher
... normally that's enough.

Rabbbi, where do you live, been there done that, right.
Vini, vidi victory in a Lao Tse sense of still
water walked upon
with no
ripple, no wave of windkist
west
as we roll east on our rock.

Away from sunset, into dawn.
Watch and see.
Have you such liberty? Watch with me?

An hour is not measured here, tis
as silver in the days o' Solomon the Jew,

or during the **** of America,

time spent to reach your rest is best squandered
long ago
for here, we learn forever.

Tis my Bleibe Doch made as real as can be,
nothing missing...

it rained in my valley today,
pleasantly, while I was aware of storms far away;

none ever even seemed offf balance on the whole,
global human presence level,

mega-bubba bubble.
We okeh, ya'll fffret not.

They was some peace made t'day. Watch on.
This ain't the fffinal today.

It's like that original sin. The actual under y'skin
original
like
dis-connect from any sense of true,

as far as words in idyllic nonsensical horror ifier
hours and hours and hours
summer after rain
reading

compared to Quake on this particualar
setting
set

there, middle of your mindscape
pineal if you see things that way
okeh

What was the intention here.
Are we convertingerconverging/ both
okeh, that worked.

Are there readers of grimoires in 2019 who can taste our salt?
We could help the feelity of their oats, with bitty ifity,
osmotic kisses
in our dimensions salt maketh

osmotic pressure soften and plumpen the old crunched up oats, eh.

what i find with western societies
is that they overly assert the worth of
psychology, without ever having read
a book of philosophy; meaning that
too many are treated as psychiatric
imbeciles, when in fact the culprit is
hard-worn and readied to re-enact the execution,
ready the plumber and forget the library banger;
with all that might hang, Charlie would
have asked Cromwell: did i have the power
or are you jeopardising in the extreme?
Calcutta o.k., hunches and surf's up!
surf's up... biggie bagpipe wave! hoo! hay!
a transvestite hooray! i too a
Thailand lady-boy, translated: north korea
in jitters and Japanese worth of shoo shy flips
of Kentucky Solomon... or some other slang
glued to cool.

Suddenly it feels numb
My body restive
My words gone dumb.
Muted grievances against the window pane
Are wiped away as insane.
Something inside, yet miles away
Resonates a perfectly eternal dismay.
Sweet are the tears that embrace,
Coursing down the contours of the loving face.


I ask myself,
“Why can I never write about important things?
About Philosophy, Politics and similar meanderings?”
Reasonable things.
Inklings of promising meanings.
Instead I struggle with my tempestuous heart,
Unimportant to the world, yet the most excruciating art.
The pain and the glory
Is the never-ending selfish story
My childish mind can recall.


Despite all this wondrous melancholy,
I always choose to repeat my folly.
Up and about to write I go,
There’s too much heart material to forego.
I lie under those dry lifeless branches,
Sit, stand or walk around in hunches.
Only the grass understands
Under the skin in innumerable strands
Pain is the only conspicuous poison
Reigning the veins, arteries,
Defining the venison.


I couldn’t look at you much
Since you drank from my cup
Travesties of my past break-up
And chose to inflict it upon me again
To see if our old life
Could be regained.
But nonchalance has a way of defeating you.
It looks odd on you,
Like an unaccustomed parvenu.


Love wrecks your heart like the shivering of an earthquake.
When my insides tear, shrivel and menacingly rake.
You realize that your nonchalance was odd indeed.
I was the friend in need
You fled the deed.
That could have saved me
From depression.


Earthquakes don’t mean any harm.
They simple do their job
And leave destruction in the wake.
Naïve.
Nonchalant.
Dilettante.
They are not exactly wrong.
No culpable intentions.
Only humming a deleterious song.
Yet
We seldom recover when the grounds from below
Shake.
I thought you were the soft breeze, drizzling rain.
But turns out,
You are an earthquake.

There was always at least five feet between us. It was actually a good thing in the preliminary stage. We could lock eyes without the urgent need to look away too soon. The intensity was containable in those five feet.

(speaks very fast) And then my stupid self went around and quickly covered four of those five feet. It is the laws of mitotic cell division god ******. You do not grow four feet in a day. You grow inch by inch, centimeter by centimeter. Ask him about that literature assignment. Shakespeare is responsible for excess glutton in today’s pick up lines. Wait for your friends to dare him to kiss you on a Truth and Dare. Wait for him to want to. Then, tell him, maybe, I like you.

That, in that one foot perimeter, I could see golden flakes in the circles of his eyes when clearly they are brown should have been the first sign that it was a bad idea. Five feet was our perimeter. Five feet was where we stopped. (points to own body) Five feet is where I stop.

For, I will never be anyone else but me. I will never experience, firsthand at least, what it is like to be a lanky six footer who hunches because she doesn't know what to do with her body. Or her exhilaration when she finds the basketball court. I will never experience being the Egyptian boy who has a chemistry counter in his kitchen, who asks his maid to buy him potassium nitrate. I won't know what it is like to be his maid who almost got arrested for asking to buy potassium nitrate (a component of explosives) in Egypt.  I shall never experience courting like the characters in a Jane Austen novel. And how nice it must feel, feeling beautiful.

And I will never ever experience, what it is like to be his girlfriend.

How lonely infidel
He that passeth I;
in Phlegethon dwells.

Son of the Seas,
seasoned with algae.
Had a plea
about how he happened to be:
"When you threw me to the
depths, into the heart of the open sea,
then a very river encircled me"

Melpomene holds her Mother's dress
while sailing the temptuous tide.
Recalls the sight of hundreds and
hunches over to address.

"Lead by a primitive spirit" she wails
and solemnly stoops to ponder.

Their ship's prow now plunges deep and
through the ripples, Melpomene meets the
seedy yellow iris' of the beast
reflecting the clouds. She squints upwards
and beholds hoofs with Faithful and True.

As the river streams into Tartarus, Mnemosyne's ears
begin to ring with a thousand cries and pleads.
But the whinnies ring out louder to deafen her
while the tail of Leviathan disappears into the blue.

Through the cave and into Lethe, the earthy smell
of the tops remain as the last but dizzy to remember;
of all those who swam lightly past its mist. But to her,
tears to enter the watery abyss:
"Many must have passed through here,
lived long to see,
but not enough to learn--"
But the ship sailed on.

The stream narrows and an opening reveals. They
see melted hail with blood on the only land they recall.
A Tree glowing brightly in front of a black sky; counted many
swords gathered at the foot. Three days they traveled in
their ship, but now their oars were put on land.

Thunder whips and trumpets horn, the fallen fruit
comes ashore.
THEIR voices bellow to ask a question:
"Was it needed for a war?"
An answer, but no pardon:
"Many a pang I have felt, those aches
violently sprung up from the seven lakes,
Is nothing but a genuine mistake.
Those worthy time and day,
Will surely be given a way."

Mother and daughter wiped the tears from their eyes,
while gently lifting them to the skies.
Above them the sun shone on the wet mass,
they see high and colorfully cast:
A reassuring Promise and eternity.

Xenia has never felt so low,
Xenia has bathed and scrubbed,
but still feels unclean.

She wants him unsexed
from her body
his kisses removed
from lips and skin,
and those places within.

She wants to wash him away,
watch all aspects of him ,
drain down the plughole
with a big slurp,
feel her flesh tingle
with cleanness,
but she still senses him there
on skin, in hair, in her memory,
he’s still there.

Xenia wants
to unkiss his kisses,
untouch his touches,
his caresses. She sits and broods,
thinks of past times,
of him and those days,
those deeds done.

Xenia wants to be reborn,
be as new, be unaware
he existed or exists,
how long and big
her want to happen
and not lists.

She recalls
his blows, his punches
to out of the way places
(he never hits faces)
his cruel torments,
foul words,
poking finger,
poke poke poke,
the endless
taunting joke.

She feels so unclean,
so tainted, so used,
so undone.

There’s a bird singing
from outside her window,
a church bell rings,
from next door
a baby cries.

She closes her eyes,
something within her
hunches up and dies.

The girl with a beautiful smile
A vibrant personality,
And a picture perfect family.
Envied and loved.
Not a single person to hate
Besides herself.
The things that nobody sees is when
She breaks down,
Cries,
And every night
Hunches over the toilet
With a spoon in her throat.
Telling herself only one more time to be pretty.
One more time to be happy.
One more time to be loved.
One more time to escape.
One more time to get better.
One more time to stop.
She lets her emotions overrule
And demons take control.
Life shouldn't be this way.
Her father's a drunk, her mothers a drug addict.
She would do anything to escape this world
Of darkness,
But no one seems to know.
She puts on this picture perfect image
To protect herself,
Despite it killing her that her voice will never be heard
No one seems to even notice
The bruises on her legs and back
Or how she always seems to go to the bathroom
Every time she eats "too much."
If she told anyone,
They would hate her,
Her parents would hurt her,
And she would never have any hope
Of becoming the girl she pretends to be.

i only think of a japanese robot thinning air in marathons:
editing in secret, while i speel the acronym a.i.
into aerodynamic informatics
for a breeze and wavy hunches true:
i wondered - would this much assure
me to buy a mandolin?
i bought a mandolin once,
but instead of gobi dried up ****** - instead
i was lodged into essays
and existential qualms relieved:
entering a 1960s l.s.d. disco
to suit a broken heart for a tongue flip of disco into ****;
i thought of a flirt though,
played the mandolin in scotland,
beneath a window for a vine,
jagged & jarred the bricks with nails to climb & clutter,
and wished for serpentine thorns to clothe
excess sight with light through
spider's diadem kept, webbed;
landed a longshanks' bonus with excess strides
to counter the "debility"
of elongation instead; took two windmills with me
into don quixote, and out popped
the pepper queen of diamonds sneezing,
aged cougar.
so? my one grand delusion is a robot
precisely spelling me wok twang wrong;
i know i'm drunk, but that's hardly an excuse
to equate soberness with sanity
and stupidity clothed in spelling relieved, so simply undone
above the rubric of welcome detention in lines of surd names after mother smith.

i realised soon enough, that with each new poem, i am abstracting myself, Kant would claim some transcendental (dentistry's epitome of detachment from the repetitiveness of the task ahead, surely a canvas worthy of perfecting the actions) method, a circumstance of an elevation ahead, a necessarily involved eventuality of an obstacle to obstruct Belgium, i.e. a plateau, a flatland... transcending doesn't necessarily invoke abstracting, by transcending you can imagine something akin to god - by abstracting you can only conspire to throw a curtain over your self - well, to put it in close proximity: transcending you invoke the necessity of god / abstracting you invoke the non-necessity of the self - by transcending you have increments, even if Newtonian (infinitesimal, calculus, Leibniz) and other measurements of change, but when it comes to abstracting you don't have a clear path toward a methodology, hence the poetic expression being adequate, a spontaneity; with each new poem i am abstracting, digging in a coal mine of nothing, revolutionising the big bang, indeed poetry's weakness is to suggest that on the Cartesian pivot, too much rests on the side of 'i am', in that poets claim high revenue by exploiting this side of the equation - to boot very little is given leverage on the 'i think' side of the juggling act... poets claim too much and think too little, but at least their claims have a standard, a standard that's invoked is having possession of a heart (the whirlpool) that gives each and every one of us a lost tractacus (tract, route, a dragging, the lost history, atomic history, atomist representation of history that's etymology - the origin of words - pre-history, onomatopoeias, the end; well... if you're going to belittle me with a ******* monkey, i might as well sing Ol' McDonald had a farm, e ah e ah oh) - oh right, you want a linear representation with clear use of conjunctions: the alternative of historical investigation, debating whether the treaty of Versailles constipated Weimar Germany to the extent of having world war two precipitate is investigated with hindsight / too late hunches - etymology is a type of history, the history of words, origins in spontaneity or onomatopoeia / mimic? good question... i don't know, and i will certainly not s  p  e  l  l it out for you, on your own... chop chop.

i really am abstracting myself, i'm not even bothered
by Kant's methodology of transcendental concerns,
for me abstraction is a poly-geometric invocation,
too many vectors, x, y, z's, pentagons, hexagons, whatever,
transcending to me is simply a parabola reduced to
a dy/dx - a straight line - forget Kant, he'd nodding off
after reading Hume (who ran stark naked in Edinburgh,
not necessarily true) -
what i came across, stylistically speaking:
i have the second volume of the Critique near me,
and *why i'm not a painter by Frank O'Hara...
the pronoun usage... philosophers are performing this
juggling act with pronouns, like would be kings...
poets have stripped themselves to the nakedness of
the first person pronoun, philosophers in turn have
put this pronoun (i) in inverted commas (if you're
into existentialism and ****), but philosophers are
mimicking kings, for example when a mother of
a labourer constructing the palace of Versailles died
unfortunately by a falling brick Louis XIV didn't become
self-conscious, because he pounced back at the woman
with the words: 'is she addressing us?', it's
like this weird schizophrenic analogue, kings and
philosophers juggle pronouns, in that they usually write
within a realm of plurality, as many people, read any
philosophy book from the Enlightenment and you'll
enter a simulation of schizophrenia - they really do juggle
the pronouns, it's like they're instilled with fighting
the Socratic daemon who constantly poured honey liquor
into the grandpa's ear on a bench in Athens -
i mean, i could throw in an extract from the Critique
to prove my point, but i'll be lazy and let you do
all the legwork, of going into a library and finding
the book in question, and the example as stated...
if you're lucky enough to have a library that actually
possesses such heretical works against the status quo.

I still see your smile bloom
In the afternoon sun.
Tall as a corn stalk
Nursed by rain
And gentle winds.
As peas in a pod
Or twin trunks
Of matching shade trees,
A boy and his companion.
We smiled at each other
With toothless relish
While causing harmless mischief.
Fishing in the brook or
Swimming in the lake,
We counted stars on our backs
While taking turns explaining
To each other all of
Life's inscrutable mysteries.
We were best of buddies,
At school and at home.
We shared our lunches
And our "girly" hunches.
We solemnly became "blood brothers"
And swore friendship
Honorable, sublime, eternal...
We were there for each other
With smiles, joys, and
Tender growth one only shares
With the most special of buds.
We were buds, and in due time
We each flowered into our
Respective summers.

We were inseparable,
And I still speak with you
Every day, past the flowers
And the iron gate.
For you will always be my friend,
Even though you could not stay.

J. Sandy

*In memory of a high school friend who died in Viet Nam.

wither goest he?
traveling, traversing, rehearsing
the good doctor lingers in the doorway out
sometimes forgotton, but always, ever, perpetually
omnipresent
dictations and suggestions, hunches corrupting
helping one last time to cauterize, sterilize
cutting off the umbilical cord to humanity
nothing to slow it down, nothing to hinder, nothing to feel
cilia burned, silly-a me to allow it
is it a neccesary burden. a beast with a broken back
still slogging, blindly, towards an imaginary finish line
hoping there is only darkness there. rest. peace
he misses his shell. the whole world is asbestos
this is his hell. the soothing water sputters the flames to smoke
and miles away, tonto points and deciphers.
"*******" is what it says, soaring eagle
the white man is so trivial
primitive in his circular command center, melting legos to heat his hearth
hiring ****** to eat his heart
a trapper keeper. a pointed rose. a poisoned tip. a mental rip. a freudian slip
this place has no ***.  I mean.. class. class is what i meant.******
surroundings never touch the surface of my skin
and quantum physicists only complicate this perspective.
**** your logic! and **** mine worse..
why must everything be rehearesed? this is a curse.
a verse of a song I sing with a gun to my head

Dumpster diving on canal with your Louie knock offs
Headed uptown where the boys get their rocks
Off a man who is lean and his pants look like sinking paper mâché

On to the golf course
He hides her phone call
A behavior called " laughing off chow mein"

She's south of the torso and belt buckle intersection when the words sound like sirens

Purpose poached in moments of fighting
With  every argument your vocabulary hunches over a little more and I can clearly see in your eyes you sense you are dying...
"Sadness, My love? "
             You are only 22,
             A small jump to his 27.
             Belly up, but find  a new *****.

Hello, Thomas.


The night is waiting for you.


The gatekeeper scans the clothes decorating your figure.
The doors are opening.

Are you ready?

Here you are.
the music floods into you,
washing over you like a wave of colors you’ve never seen before-
rushing past you before you can examine them-
simultaneously melting away
and ripping god knows what away from you.
The experience feels new every time.
It’s a good feeling.
Breathe, and walk in.

This universe is tangled in stardust, in lights and movement.
The ground you walk on invisible,
existing only in vibrations,

mechanical pulse.

The place is littered with sounds- faint and drowning-
of hard breathing, occasional quiet moaning.
(Although they are felt more than they are heard.)
The scent of two hundred and fifty six sweating bodies,
all kinds of different smoke
and liquor;
not so much intoxicating as it is calming.

It’s full tonight.

The air spirals into you- fresh, clear, thin.
Sharp, but never painful;
your lungs full of the scented energy.
Faintly bitter, but never losing that distinct fruity essence.
Ah.
That’s what it is- forbidden fruit.
Toxic and irresistibly sweet.
Your teeth sink effortlessly into the soft surface,
it’s laughing on your tongue.

Candy-laced acid.
Stinging love bite.
Sweet poison,
like a slow french kiss tangled in the need for more.

You walk.

Your body brushes against worn leather,
warm skin.
You make your way through the bodies that feel more like a single entity than separate people (or people at all),
alive only through energy.
Hivemind of young souls.

(You move so slowly…
drink it in.)

If there is a god,
it exists in the body of the human.
As an unexplored force
corrupting the man-made man,
reverting them to pairs of hands that kiss the ground shamelessly,
to bodies that speak through groans and whimpers.
Primal angels.

If there is a god,
it is in this room tonight.

Where are you now?
Where have your slow steps taken you?

Ah.

A throne stands before you,
a familiar image.
The king is another tonight,
but the role of a spectator is almost equally as satisfying.

“King.” you think. “Ruler, but not of the people.”

He needs no servants
and your eyes are the only ones drinking in his figure,
as the others are too deep in trance, eyes glazed.
Dead, but with the essence of the living.
You observe them for a moment.

They are not bodies anymore- their souls having inhaled the life out of anything you can touch in a human.
You swear you can almost see through them,
the lights kissing, pressing the surface of their ghostly forms.
They’ve probably already been here for hours- unraveling,
evaporating into divine steam.

And what of the king?

He seems rather uninterested, or perhaps some combination of focused and relaxed.
He doesn’t move much. It’s a strange contrast, but not too strange-
it feels right, as though the young man, so unapologetic in his sole state of being,
makes the subtle nodding of his head appropriate, despite the violent nature of the beat.

The music is powerful, steady, reminiscent of your own passionate concentration when the throne is yours.
He’s a handsome fellow.
You chuckle at the thought, maybe you should stop staring now.

Oh.

Eye contact.


For an excruciatingly long moment, neither of you can tear your gaze away- (you are, after all, the only observer- this was inevitable.)
eyes locked on a stranger, reality submerged in the thick liquid that is this knot of sudden, unnamed emotions.
You are unsure if the pounding in your ears is the music or your heart that has leaped into your throat.

He turns his head slowly, still unable to tear himself away, trying to break free form your accidental and- completely unintentional- spell.
He manages to do so (it wasn’t easy),
fixating on the machine before him, his cheeks slightly flushed now.
The expression on his face unchanging.
(You don’t know it, but you’ve cursed him.)

Well, that was interesting.

What a powerful spectator you must be, to distract a king in such a way.

He hunches over the machine, cradling it with his chest and shoulders.
His left hand presses his left ear- the messenger whispering secrets to him;
the sounds that are to come.
He twists knobs with his right hand, clearing the path for the next song.
The track blends with the fading beat and becomes another.
Worlds colliding,
realities woven into one another.

Your shoulders drop,
the tenseness melting away with the melody encased in this secret universe you’ve entered tonight.

“Mmh…”

The music starts to get a hold of you.
You are beginning to submit to it’s voice, it’s demanding pleas.
It begs to be let into your body, to possess and consume you.
You are allowing it to drink away your free will.
There is little left.
You aren’t new to this- but again- it truly is a fresh experience every time.
And how intimate, the vibrations that seem to stroke, caress…
the sampled melodies who’s home you now hear being foreign to them– ‘till they become entwined,
one with their new world, through the love of the people.
And how strange, you think- to come from one universe, but belong in another.

You close your eyes, everything you are coiling around the music now,
and accept that this- here-
is the universe you belong in.

The room disappears along with your body.
Sensation and soul make up all you are.
The king has been observing you quietly,
he’s taken interest in you.

The more you move, the less aware he becomes of his hanging jaw.
His lips are parted only slightly, but his curiosity is evident.
You are impressing him.
The contrast between what he sees now and what he saw in your eyes just a moment ago-
it’s fascinating- how human you were, how familiar- a face in a crowd.
Yet now, how unrestrained, how pure and animalistic you’ve become.
He lets out a huff- eye brows knit together- in what seems like frustration.
He blinks a few times, his expression quickly changing to something like a half-worried look
that is secretly sheer ****** pleasure.
You are unraveling before him.

Thomas,
he’s found God in your movements.

Something of you now belongs to him,
but he doesn’t try to take it, and you don’t consciously give it.
It is a silent, intimate exchange you’ve unknowingly taken part of.

How untamed, what you’ve become.

You smile
as you feel yourself let go of everything you once were,
making it possible for the universe to do with you what it pleases.
You don’t know it, but in this state, the universe is not the only one able to take you,
touch and taste you,
breathe the language of sound into the crook of your neck.
Anyone can.
Anyone watching, that is.

Who’s watching you, Thomas?

It starts off small, like a perfect tasting cigarette, a pleasurable breath-
but soon becomes an overwhelming addiction
wrapped in the fear of having to stop.
You’ve unknowingly given yourself to the king.
He’s unwrapping you like a child dying to know what his christmas gift is,
so desperately and so quickly, that he hasn’t been able to register the event yet
and this translates to a breathless, low moan escaping his lips along with half of his soul
as he watches you, still too shocked by the foreign emotions to manage paying attention to anything
but the gracefully savage mystery before him.

His eyes are on you
and you are not consciously lending yourself to anyone willing to take you,
but here you are, shamelessly exposing yourself without showing an inch of skin.
Similar to the ghosts surrounding you,
save for the fluidity of your movements distinguishing you from the crowd.

His thoughts grow hotter the more your hips sway,
the questions melting into more intimate ones the deeper he goes:
What’s under your shirt?
What would it feel like, to have his hands there? Palming at your chest?
Is your skin warm right now?
Is it sensitive, Thomas?
Are you sensitive?
What shade of red paints your skin when too flustered to speak?
When you’re moaning a boy’s name?
And what would his name sound like
sliding down your tongue, dripping down your chin?
What sounds crawl up your throat when being crushed by repressed desire
like the kind crushing him right now?

Something like pure hatred forces his chest to tighten.
He’s secretly blaming you for the chaos banging the walls of his brain,
yet no part of him wants this to stop.
What he feels is some mixture of hatred and barely contained inhuman lust.
He’s panting now.
Christ, what have you done to the poor man?
You bare your teeth, as if sensing the king’s needy breaths.
You wear a look that he’s seen in lovers who chant his name in bed.
**** it.
The image is too sweet to ignore.

He is suddenly reminded of an old girlfriend.
She was so shy, always hesitant,
but that made the night they had spent together special, sweeter.
She had stripped, baring herself for the king,
all for him, all by herself.

(In a whisper, the words lick up your jaw-)
Just like you, Thomas.

“You’re such a ****; you’re so easy.” he’d whisper, commenting on how she had been waiting for him all day,
just so she could have him breathing commands into her,
making a barely coherent mess out of the girl.
(***** talk was reserved for special people, the times he’d speak during *** were rare, and words like those were to be considered a treasure.)
You are nearly as exposed as she.

“…****…”
he mouthes, not referring to old girlfriends anymore.
He wants you.

The eyes that have been tugging at your clothes, stealing you,
they blink twice,
what seems like interrupting confusion painted on the king’s face.
His head lowers in shame of admitting his desires,
but soon rises to resume watching his new reason to visit this haven.

It’s somewhat amusing-
you are so lost in ecstasy, you’ve yet to notice him
devouring your image,
silently storing the material you’ve provided him with;
celluloid images that steal the breath from his lungs.

The song is ending. His set is done.
“That’s enough.” he thinks, finally breathing,
trying to convince himself that he’s chosen to stop this behavior out of his own free will.
His face turns a lovely shade of pink, the embarrassment sinking in.
He cannot quite understand what’s happened, or how, for you were merely
a pair of eyes that locked on his for a little too long.
He wouldn’t doubt the idea that he’s been possessed, or cursed (or both)
had he been taught to be superstitious at all.
“He’s just a stranger…” thinks the king,
“king” no longer a suitable word for what the blushing boy has become.

As if on cue, another is ready to take his place.
It’s time to give up the throne, let another rule the night.
Packing his tools, he remembers your image and tries spotting you in the sea of dancers.
(They’re much more human now, becoming less transparent and more grounded in reality.)
He doesn’t find you.
Where have you gone to?

“…oui…ah- merci.”

You sit on a stool, back facing the swimming lights.
You were thirsty.
The cold inhabiting the glass is transferring to your palm.
The liquid hugs three ice cubes,
it’s only purpose being to coat your throat in something other than saliva.
(You don’t understand why your throat feels dry, what, is saliva not wet? Ugh.)
You fixate on the glass, stroking it slowly with your thumb.

At this angle, there is not enough light entering the glass to truly appreciate the color of the drink.
The lights pound on your back, like waves crashing on rock.
Your body casts a shadow directly over the glass.
The color and shade of it’s contents are a mystery to all but you;

Gold.

It looks lovely when kissed by sunlight,
although the times you’ve had this drink in broad daylight are few.
You have fonder, clearer memories of the liquid glistening under the moonlight, or drowning under muffled lights
like now.

You feel a sense of power over everyone there for a moment-
the lights, ever changing, hide the liquid’s true form;
it becoming a myth, shrouded in doubt.
At times it appears champagne pink.
Laurel green.
Dull, dying vermilion.
Mustard yellow bleeding into a powder blue.
It’s true beauty is a secret nobody in this universe knows of.

Indeed, Thomas.
Tonight, you are the only one who knows the beauty of gold.

An image comes to mind, sudden and powerful-
eyes of the king.
The thought pulls the breath out of you, your lungs empty for a moment.
You inhale shakily, shuddering at the feeling, but loving the memory.
Left. Right.
No one saw that. Good.

…Black and gold.
This sea of darkness, space.
Empty, soundless, but only when lost enough-
enveloped in the crowded, booming universe.

“Mm…”

In that brief encounter, something happened.
You can’t understand it,
but this doesn’t bother you in the slightest.
He was shining, you think, like the only star in a sea of black,
visible to none but you,
the only observer, his only spectator.
(The effects of the drink are settling in now,
the warmth nestling in your chest.
Loose and easy.)

Golden King.

Ruler of the night, star of your world.
Treasure, glistening with sweat.
Your treasure. Your secret. Yours.

“Mine…”

You don’t stop caressing the glass, it being held up in your left hand now, elbow resting on the counter.
You stare straight ahead, through the wall, into nothing, completely lost in thought.
Eyelids lowered in a confident, relaxed look.

Silver smile.
Gleaming, blooming before him.

What are you?- the words are silent in his mind
and he mouthes them without quite realizing it. (The movement is too subtle to notice.)
The king is seated next to you- wide-eyed- no doubt in some initial attempt to speak to you.
Mind-reading powers would be wonderful right now.
He doesn’t know what’s being unveiled before him, but it’s quite a sight-
you are unfolding into something he cannot fully appreciate, your thoughts a mystery to him.

“Oh…”
The shirt you’re wearing has short sleeves- a little too short.
Short and tight. It’s almost too small on you,
but no.
It only gives the boy a chance to better appreciate your skin.
(He doesn’t remember seeing you like this. There’s a jacket on your lap,
he assumes you took it off when you finished your… display.)
Soft skin.
He looks back at you, (deciding that your skin is not you- there’s more to you and he wants to see that.) your eyes.
Still lost in thought, still a mystery.
A warmth settles in him, a familiar feeling that’s usually induced by watching children play.
Hidden. Pleasantly amusing, delicate.

Delicate.
Beautiful, but in secret.
Moon flower, blooming only in the dead of night,
in it’s own private world.
He is not a part of that world right now,
but this makes your image all the more beautiful.

Distracting thoughts aside, the king truly does enjoy your current display (he almost thinks back to your other display from earlier,
and doesn’t, deciding this is much better).
It’s as if you’ve found the secret to stay forever young, he thinks
and remembers your dancing, what you became.

Divine steam.
The god in you evaporating into the bitter-sweet air.
Precious, eternal for tonight, young.
Forever lost in heaven’s labyrinth.

He hadn’t noticed, but you were speaking. To the bartender, most likely.
You turn and

oh-
oh god.
You’ve found each other.
He had forgotten that was a possibility.

(Golden star.
Silver lips.)

That’s him– that’s the king.
The very same you so confidently claimed as yours a few moments ago.
Did you say it aloud? Does he know?
It was just a fantasy, you think- trying to explain to him- to you- trying to convince someone that it’s not what it looks like.
You forget he can’t hear your thoughts, they bleed into the world and you actually begin speaking, trying to explain that no, christ, you don’t think he’s “yours” in any way.

“I–”

You don’t notice the absurdity of what you’re trying to do right now,
but nothing else comes out.
You are both simply lost in each other, speechless, shocked.
Someone has to breathe, and it’s him who does so first,
being the more lucid one right now.

“Is… is that real leather?”

What?

Your jacket, Thomas. He’s talking about your jacket.

Oh.

“Um… yeah.” You look down at it plainly, not sure of what exactly is happening right now,
then back at him.

There is an awkward pause, broken by a statement that can only be even more awkward,
or not. It’s soothing somehow, you think.

“I play here fridays and sundays at this same hour.”
He speaks holding his breath,
lest he drown in the moment.

Another pause.

“I’d…”
pause.
“like to see you again.”

You’