He seeks truth in places of no good.
He flies high in places where others stood
Still he cries tears of perpetual sense.
A chameleon
his outer vesture cloaks his identity.

Unyielding
He plants his foot in the dirt.
Tangled vines tie his toes
contrasting his poetic prose.
Left dangling in the temptress spider lily's web
the noose tightens
as the old boy sings.

A fist with two thumbs
he raises like a martian.
Strangers illegibly write him
off.

A Jekyllish laugh
empties the mucus from his lungs.
Eons of inhaling senseless knowledge
he finds a second breathe to speak.
Words slice the web of lies
spinning silk into impenetrable pride.

Raw and uncut
his diction polishes diamonds
before were only rust.

He wakens every morning
Anew defiant face.
Contradicting himself
a joke
he cackles everyday.
The children who say he's changed
are correct.
But the chameleon found his true colors
somewhere between the lines
of white and black.

I can see your eyes
trying to hide behind glasses you surmise
no tendency to free nor fear to be

I waited as an outline
watching curtains fall to further shadow
making out a hunched figure -
shaded but clear as the note
you purposefully wrote illegibly-
Look at me!

You walked away bent and kept
your curtain nailed to your head-
and I gloriously alight instead.

-

Crazed beyond this fragile manuscript
  ink now bled out in caustic flow
emptying my mind of the clutter
  pouring from a heart beat’s mechanism
grinding gears of rusted thoughts
  handwriting illegibly unrecognizable
scratched into burned edge parchment
  pleading for destinations
across borderlines and wastelands
  calloused fingers write…poetry
between broken dishes and *** luck cuss words
  folded, creased and left lying on the desk
gathering defiant dust particles
  behind the barricaded door
of cranial creativity
                                     seeping

i had taken the morning off from work
to get a botox injection
afterwards i went to starbucks
and bought a venti carmel something

to drink on my walk to work
somewhere inbetween starbucks
and work i noticed a man in a wheelchair
he was stuck

il·leg·i·bly
he was asking for help
illegibly

i had to put my coffee on the ground
to get his wheelchair up and moving again
the wheels ran over my foot
and the coffee got knocked over
and spilled on the ground
he didn't say thank you,
but he was in a wheelchair
and couldn't speak coherently

it hurt
and my toenails
were black for the entire summer

a few months later
i got a job at starbucks corporate
but quit with no notice after six months
because the manager
couldn't stop yelling about white privledge, me, and howard shultz

and i didn't want to turn into her.

her initials were kkk.

I wrote her lyrics on the back
of a postcard. Half of them were
mine, the other half stolen from
an undisclosed source by the sea.
I meant to finish the piece with
hope or a splintered olive branch,
but instead I changed hands
and wrote illegibly:
I expect to hear from you
next time you are bored
or alone.

It has been four years now
and I haven't heard that song on
the radio. It has been four years
and the letterbox remains closed
like the reluctant mouth of a
four-year-old in a dentist's chair.
I haven't seen the doctor for a long time
and often I know that I am dying.
I close my eyes and slow my breath:
there are stellar clouds and old
Arcturus is falling from the sky.

The farmer's truck is offloading pigeons,
descending the cages as they fight
for the freedom of an updraught.
I watch it behind a television screen
and I see acceptable nature through
my parent's back window. I have learned
to experience everything behind
a screen door, to keep out mosquitoes
and compassion for far-off deaths:
Twenty-four dead in dust cloud,
as freedom spreads to the East.

I wrote her a letter the day before
my wedding and told her the whole
affair was simply to get a mortgage
and to have a reason to shave.
I knew she would likely have moved
address, or else threw out my envelopes
along with pizza leaflets and
charity bags. I wrote clearly with
my better hand:
*I have found a place to rest my wings,
but they still cramp at the thought
of a cloud.

The burning sun dips behind the buildings
That blur my view.
They stand, strong sentinels,
Soldiers from another time.
Heavy with rust,
Bowing with age,
Yet their proud necks extend
Stretching tall toward the Heavens,
Regaling another far off time.
An epoch when the world still,
Flourished.
Before the insect-like destruction.

The tears coursing down my cheeks,
They are memories.
Stories and tales of my beautiful world
Before it slipped through my grasp
Like water in cupped hands.
I mourn my loss
And your loss.
The epitaph of the world reads:
Silence.
Illegibly carved onto the backs
Of those who walk her surface
And for now, we all choose to ignore it.

When people point

fingers they scribble

illegibly with nails.

Expounded late today April 27th, 2023
since being written
countless years ago
maybe a baker's dozen
as thee doodling **** doth crow
scouting about for carrion
scavenging for dead animals
and rooting about garbage to sell
at annual corvus entrepôt,
where at birds eye view

buzzfeeding crowdsource
talon (telling) the famed truth
regarding chicken scratch
scrawled illegibly by eccentric hand
now sought after collector's item
signature birdbrained, bird dogged,
bird dinned long haired,
pencil necked geek recluse
can be found in his grotto
along with original manuscripts

characterizing Mark Twain
in general and ***** Joe
in particular linkedin
with Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn,
who suffered fools gladly,
but nevertheless being a security detail
he dealt with hoodlums -
frequently tossing them out
on their golden earring
and experienced severe lumbago.

When dire circumstances extant do I ask
for anonymous benefactor
to write me a blank check
so edenic, idyllic, and pacific sunny
spring day yours truly can bask
tapping a keg of spring water
stored in an airtight cask
when thirsty, I pour into
an ice cold
(not a tad above absolute zero)
temperature controlled flask
while donned (underclothes

resembling Ally's gaiters),
and outer garments
emblematic of space suits
my favorite martian outfit
and astronaut helmet and mask
to minimize contamination
paraphernalia acquired courtesy gofundme
for assistance sans when cash strapped
since temptation to rob a bank dismissed  
guru wannabe of gumption
buckles when he tackles
formidable onerous task.

Otherwise an inner compulsion
advocates dishing out non repeating
infinite decimal calculating pi
on nearing infinite jesting kron limit
can unlock esprit de corp
spirit to tackle and barrel headlong
novel circumstance silently cheering
myself to get unstuck
if in quandary like eeyore
and experience shuttered
gloating euphoria galore
for

reasons spelled out
because das saucy papa
**** sitters himself an insecure
noodle head as told me courtesy Kishore
and Kouila Raval –
unsure if surname correct,
(who approximately
forty five years ago lived at
Colony Arms Apartments
within Audubon Pennsylvania,
where yours truly felt infatuation
toward their daughter named Menal)

woven into this reasonable rhyme
as thoughts analogous
getting squeezed thru many a kernel pour
out corny and flaky as Tony the tiger
in tandem with Katy Perry
emanating a figurative roar
to even out the score,
when as a boy alias scapegoat
of bullies subsequently
pleaded for peace versus declaring war,
prepubescent and young adult of yore.

He admits being affected with Peter Pan's
jiffy (labyrinthe) syndrome
the prospect of becoming older,
I decried physical maturation
(wanted to remain being a little boy)
upon skinny legs objected to stand
when juiced a striping slip of a lad,
whether at home
or in class room
playing solitary candy land
submissive toward parental

intervention against teachers’ pet(s)
mandated got foisted upon my person
equated to more than helping hand
my lonely hearts club one young man band,
whereby me late mother
(preceded date of this poem)
before lovely bones
of then octogenarian father
punctuated mortality
with exclamation mark
when tightly coiled resembles ampersand!

Said enabling parents offtimes
completed my entire major assignments,
homework, and major class project,
say researching history of York
reinforced dependence on others
with angst riddled psychic torque
underscoring in boldface defects
mine genetically typed quirk
this then young man lacked confidence
as requisite  perk
with inxs o faith no more seeds
of worthlessness did lurk
inferiority hardly groomed me
a foo fighting beastie boy
resembling creature from Black Lagoon
covered head to toe with mire and murk
antagonistic role and potential enemy
characterized by Captain Kirk;

Hence without a spock of confidence,
neither sensibility nor cents
cause gifted with noggin quite dense
consigned to bruit off fence
against meself, an outlier
never found among bad company of gents
which at presence doth incense
that middle aged male,
whence any aid pains like a lance
essentially donning out role of offence
particularly with lack of finances
where mine family rents.

Shaindel (Sadie), variant of Shana Harris
died May 13th, 1959 exquisitely chiseled
alphanumeric characters legibly engraved
sepulchral casket entombing lovely bones
deoxyribonucleic acid repurposed into me
Matthew Scott Harris patronymic protector,
when I die taking family surname to netherland
who unwittingly named his youngest daughter
after his recently deceased father's mother.

Mortality encompasses subsequent cremation
never mind death of yours truly unbeknownst
mine soul will migrate towards deceased kith
kindred folks only known courtesy genealogy
descendents called Eastern Europe homeland
upon landing at Ellis Island émigrés hugged
immigration officials and illegibly scribbled
unpronounceable/ unreadable birth names
subsequently adopting common shorthand.

Chromosomes reconstituted genetic material
gifted from forebears ecstatic immigrants apt
to be regaled by relatives hustling newcomers
into fast paced frenzy, the latter gesticulating
at cityscape marveling over hubbub jabbering
babble synchronized in tandem with hawkers
and vendors selling, peddling comestibles,
gewgaws, papers, et cetera predating buyer
beware analogous to innocents abroad say
by George an American in Paris humming
Rhapsody in Blue.

Agog regarding novel sights never seen within
father/mother land, viz supposed New World
blitzkrieg eventually quieted, relegated, shelved...
analogous by Dickens perusing tchotchkes
commonly found within olde curiosity shop,
yet no matter acclimatization arose espying
eye opening merchandise, the dirt poor status
regarding bloodlines a couple generations ago
immediate deterrent experienced by Aaron
Harris (papa's father) as a boy, who provided
for his family, their hardscrabble existence
only somewhat alleviated thru hook and crook.

Please pardon poetic license usurped,
especially slight exaggeration of penury
promulgated concerning up by bootstraps
scenario evinced by paternal grandfather
after he attained and emerged out boyhood,
though destitution imprinted thru his infancy
until growing up hardened qua hard school
of knocks limiting him to eighth grade education.