For Mike Marconett

                                  of happy memory

Bright star, beyond a Sterno stove’s brief glow,
We’ll live forever as we live this night:
Coffee and cigarettes and comradeship,
Our backs against the sun-warmed Sierras
As the cold falls from infinite darkness
To keep the snow in place another night,
To smile in ancient silence back at you,
To make a glowing, slumberous twilight until dawn.
Those C-rations were good after a day
Of scrambling among pre-historic rocks
Made musical by the dinosaur creek,
Water as cold as the dark end of time.
San Diego glows in the south-southwest,
Silently, inefficiently, light lost.
But you, dear, happy star, will still shine down
On dreaming youths, tonight and other nights,
Counting for us, for them, each millennium.

Camping on the Edge of Forever

For Michael Dean Marconette
of happy memory

Bold star, beyond a Sterno stove’s brief glow,
We’ll live forever as we live this night:
Coffee and cigarettes and comradeship,
Our backs against the sun-warmed Sierras
As the cold falls from infinite darkness
To keep the snow in place another night,
To smile in ancient silence back at you,
To make a glowing, slumberous twilight until dawn.
Those C-rations were good after a day
Of scrambling among pre-historic rocks
Made musical by the dinosaur creek,
Water as cold as the dark end of time.
San Diego glows in the south-southwest,
Silently, inefficiently, light lost.
But you, dear, happy star, will still shine down
On dreaming youths, tonight and other nights,
Counting for us, for them, each millennium.

'Twas such an iridescent masquerade
Upon the gestures all,
Flower guises floating freely about
This mansion chamber's ball.
Medieval castle tapestry dwarfing them
With the lofty hall,
And there arrive and vacate portal
Fading unto the wall.
A gateway whereas such events unique
When arrivals call
And departed bid final farewell from
This mansion chamber's ball.

Values grouped and danced entwined
All over the chamber floor
Gaggling, babbling, in glorious glee
Ever since eve silence tore.
Yet, one lonely soul biding his life
Blended within the wall decor.
Scanning masks inefficiently in the chamber,
Electing in mind to who adore
Then a rapping of energy is heard around
Tapping at the mansion door.
Spiriting masqueraders slide inside here
Ever since eve silence tore.

Inevitable capture of the silent statue
No longer blending of absent joy.
Given assortment of masks to be as play,
And being the ball's brightest decoy.
Wisping to and fro he goes to furthermore
Echo his mask and employ
Silent cartographers of party unto the wild
Festival masqueraders enjoy.
So this Napoleon of dance and sing aware
He twas nevermore of coy
Stunned as struck to his guise hiding inside
And being the ball's brightest decoy.

The accursed mask pried off at last
Hence he carried his glee
And surmised so to unhide inside feelings
Selecting the costume every wisely.
Those who fight of ownerright cause,
Grasping back unrightfully.
To amass the mask unto the masquerader
So inside they cannot see
Nevertheless, grasping suppressed he philosophized,
"Why hide the face? Let them see.
Life here today is an entire masquerade.
Select the costume ever wisely."

I've never heard more people in my life insist they are good at something more than driving. Nearly every person I know has insisted to me that they are a great driver. And when its an off day? "I swear, most days I'm great though". I'm never quite sure if its because no one is often there to judge them but themselves, or if its hard for them to accept they are only adequate at something they do day in and day out.

As someone who has only ever held a permit myself, I am fascinated by this phenomenon. Its as if its unthinkable to accept that you're only okay or average or even bad at something everyone does. I've found similar results with cooking. Anytime I tell someone I'm good at it, they burst in with their own stories of their good cooking, though I never was comparing them.

I don't understand the inability to accept inadequacies. They are a part of who they are. Mind you, I conversely also believe to accept greatnesses. But Doesn't it diminish those greatnesses if you don't fully accept your misfalls?

Myself, as an easy example. I can't legally drive. I love science but hate research and laboratory processes. I can't stop myself from questioning math long enough to understand it. I get really obsessive about making lists, and I have to do them before doing things, even if they end up wrong. I write novels inefficiently, because I prefer to write them out of order, which ultimately tends to lead to wasted scenes. I hate citrus. I'm near addicted to weird things. I'm fiercely independent and protective of it. I like to stay up late and get up early and struggle with enjoying sleep.

But I have greatnesses. I am a wonderful writer, particularly realistic fiction novels. I am great at technical writing, because I love science but understand rhetoric and audience-driven communication. I am super intelligent artistically, and have a level of creative innovation and drive that baffles even me sometimes. I am wonderful at questioning everything and giving good insight. I am adaptable. I like vegetables.

I feel like accepting these inadequacies makes me inadequate. I think they make me human. I would never try to tell someone I'm good at driving. I'm not. But i hope to be passable. I want to get better to the point of making me a better, functioning person, but good? C'mon. Inflating myself won't make me better. It'll just make me bloated.

Sometimes being inadequate is kinda okay, as long as you have your own personal greatness too.

I've never heard more people in my life insist they are good at something more than driving. Nearly every person I know has insisted to me that they are a great driver. And when its an off day? "I swear, most days I'm great though". I'm never quite sure if its because no one is often there to judge them but themselves, or if its hard for them to accept they are only adequate at something they do day in and day out.

As someone who has only ever held a permit myself, I am fascinated by this phenomenon. Its as if its unthinkable to accept that you're only okay or average or even bad at something everyone does. I've found similar results with cooking. Anytime I tell someone I'm good at it, they burst in with their own stories of their good cooking, though I never was comparing them.

I don't understand the inability to accept inadequacies. They are a part of who they are. Mind you, I conversely also believe to accept greatnesses. But Doesn't it diminish those greatnesses if you don't fully accept your misfalls?

Myself, as an easy example. I can't legally drive. I love science but hate research and laboratory processes. I can't stop myself from questioning math long enough to understand it. I get really obsessive about making lists, and I have to do them before doing things, even if they end up wrong. I write novels inefficiently, because I prefer to write them out of order, which ultimately tends to lead to wasted scenes. I hate citrus. I'm near addicted to weird things. I'm fiercely independent and protective of it. I like to stay up late and get up early and struggle with enjoying sleep.

But I have greatnesses. I am a wonderful writer, particularly realistic fiction novels. I am great at technical writing, because I love science but understand rhetoric and audience-driven communication. I am super intelligent artistically, and have a level of creative innovation and drive that baffles even me sometimes. I am wonderful at questioning everything and giving good insight. I am adaptable. I like vegetables.

I feel like accepting these inadequacies makes me inadequate. I think they make me human. I would never try to tell someone I'm good at driving. I'm not. But i hope to be passable. I want to get better to the point of making me a better, functioning person, but good? C'mon. Inflating myself won't make me better. It'll just make me bloated.

Sometimes being inadequate is kinda okay, as long as you have your own personal greatness too.

Camping on the Edge of Forever

For HM3 Michael Dean Marconett, USN

of happy memory

Wild stars, beyond a Sterno stove’s tame glow,
We’ll live forever as we live this night:
Coffee and cigarettes and comradeship,
Our backs against the sun-warmed Sierras
As the cold falls from infinite darkness
To keep the snow in place another night,
To smile in ancient silence back at you,
To make a glowing, slumberous twilight until dawn.
Those C-rations were good after a day
Of scrambling among prehistoric rocks
Made musical by the dinosaur creek,
Water as cold as the dark end of time.
San Diego glows in the south-southwest,
Silently, inefficiently, light lost.
But you, wild, happy star, will still shine down
On dreaming youths, tonight and other nights,
Counting for us, for them, each millennium.

STOP!
All the thoughts in my head.
Won’t stop racing,
Til I’m dead.
Impossibly docile,
Inefficiently plain.
Shoot off all my fingers,
And only faith remains!

GOD!
It’s been so long since we’ve spoken.
I once believed I was to be a conduit,
Thought I could be chosen.
   Unbelievably simple,
Disgustingly new.
Cut off my head,
I shall sprout two.

EVIL!
Why do you exist?
Are you simply here,
To ruin all happiness?
  Happily together,
Yet always apart.
Kick it back to the beginning,
And i'll restart!

Hmm... on second thought
lemme join anorexic club
until rib cage protrudes taut and visible
doubling as drum to drub
synchronized within heart of darkness,
especially when electrocardiogram exhibits
absolute zero vital sign,
cardiac arrest translates
as cessation to lub dub,
hence yours truly

declared dead as doornail,
coroner report deems arrhythmia
directly linkedin to deliberate Machiavellian flub
courtesy the missus attempt to poison me
actually aborted cuz nanobots
loosed upon body gripped with rigor mortis,
a minor inconvenient truth
cuz odorless and tasteless deadly toxins
rendered me convalescing
from bout with death, an oxymoronic
former slenderman gourmand.

temporarily deceased
until said microscopic robots
avidly analogous to frenzied
figuratively hogtied pigs
buzzfeeding at a trough
creating porcine hubbub
invisible nanoids (0.1-10 micrometres)
accomplished programmed task
whereby fatal microbes they did scrub
away leaving me fit as a fiddle.

No matter she thoroughly, painstakingly
and lovingly didst strew
haphazardly she threw
leftovers together,
this blustery march like
November twenty six figuratively view
wing the remaining thirty plus days
of two thousand twenty one
thoroughly cooked in microwave until...
poor excuse for my meal appeared
with consistency of shoe leather.

Think the missus not afraid
of Virginia Woolf keen to experiment
treating me like the Gingerbread Hag would
questionable resultant glop pantomimed
for my guessing pleasure
never in bajillion years
as amateurish Marcel Marceau charade
performance courtesy the spouse,

an entrée she gave - yours truly
immediately sought to evade
me subsequently evincing
horrific puckered mealy mouth
as though I swallowed hand grenade
figurative exploding oral cavity
feeble futile gesticulation inveighed.

Thus, methinks himself wise
to don cooking apron
please do not ask why
trumpeting self as master chef boyardee
so move over wife and allow husband to try
his hand (using skill - let) me prepare Thai
and/or other Asian cuisine dish,
cuz when free to potschke

(To fuss or "mess around"
inefficiently and inexpertly), I haint shy
to blend (indiscriminately) ingredients
ofttimes yours truly barley able to ply
boiling water since significant other
does not give this garden variety
and generic, gimlet eyed
gourmandizing guilt free
Earth friendly gumption goaded guy.

Every so often yours truly
gets so hungry, he could eat a horse
(yours truly jest kidding hoof course)
truth be told, I only eat one meal per day
all day from son up to son down, me a force
tubby reckoned with,
who if he gives way to vice
event chew wooly experiences remorse.

Hum glad to share mine reasonably rhyming hook
twenty six letters linkedin amidst
various combinations, formations, permutations,...
allows, enables, and provides a look
into the mindscape of Matthew Scott Harris
doth show himself with steely dangling
nonsense with sense and sensibility he forsook.

(a poetic partial fiction
blended, diced, fricaseed,
marinated, mixed, pureed, sautéed,
stewed... with fact)

Hmm... on second thought
lemme join anorexic club
until rib cage protrudes taut and visible
doubling as drum to drub
synchronized within heart of darkness,
especially when electrocardiogram exhibits
absolute zero vital sign,
cardiac arrest translates
as cessation to lub dub,
hence yours truly
declared dead as doornail,
coroner report deems arrhythmia

directly linkedin
to deliberate Machiavellian flub
courtesy the missus attempt to poison me
actually aborted cuz nanobots
loosed upon body gripped with rigor mortis,
a minor inconvenient truth
with earthling in the balance
cuz odorless and tasteless deadly toxins
rendered me convalescing
from bout with death, an oxymoronic
former slenderman gourmand.

Temporarily deceased
until said microscopic robots
avidly analogous to frenzied
figuratively hogtied pigs
buzzfeeding at a trough
creating porcine hubbub
invisible nanoids (0.1-10 micrometres)
accomplished programmed task,
whereby fatal microbes they did scrub
away leaving me fit as a fiddle.

No matter she thoroughly, painstakingly
and lovingly didst strew
haphazardly she threw
leftovers together,
this blustery march like
November twenty fourth figuratively view
wing the remaining thirty plus days
of two thousand twenty three
thoroughly cooked in microwave until...
poor excuse for my meal appeared
with consistency of shoe leather.

Think the missus not afraid
of Virginia Woolf keen to experiment
treating me like the Gingerbread Hag would:
questionable resultant glop pantomimed
for my guessing pleasure,
never figure out in bajillion years
as amateurish Marcel Marceau charade
performance courtesy the spouse,

an entrée she gave - yours truly
immediately sought to evade
me subsequently evincing
horrific puckered mealy mouth
as though I swallowed hand grenade
figurative exploding oral cavity
feeble futile gesticulation inveighed.

Thus, methinks himself wise
to don cooking apron
please do not ask why
trumpeting self as master chef boyardee
so move over wife and allow husband to try
his hand (using skill - let) me prepare Thai
and/or other Asian cuisine dish,
cuz when free to potschke

(To fuss or "mess around"
inefficiently and inexpertly), I haint shy
to blend (indiscriminately) ingredients
ofttimes yours truly barley able to ply
boiling water since significant other
does not give opportunity
to this garden variety
and generic, gimlet eyed
gourmandizing guilt free
Earth friendly gumption
generic goaded guy.

Every so often yours truly
gets so hungry, he could eat a horse
(yours truly jest kidding hoof course)
truth be told, I only eat one meal per day
all day from sunup to sundown, me a force
tubby reckoned with,
who if he gives way to vice
event chew wooly experiences remorse.

Hum glad to share mine reasonably rhyming hook
line and sink cup hated
twenty six letters linkedin amidst
various combinations, formations, permutations,...
allows, enables, and provides a look
into the mindscape of Matthew Scott Harris
doth show himself with steely dangling
nonsense with sense and sensibility he forsook.

Build me up from the bottom,
I was wholly rotten,
From the inside to out,
So blatantly incorrect.

                             "Just an unfortunate mistake."

Least I've got love,
Least I've got heart,
Least I've got a roof,
Least I've got food.

What if it's not enough?
Oh, I suppose it's not enough.

                             "Rotten monster
                                                         Selfish creature"

I wanna see the stars.
It's just so much to ask.

The world doesn't work well for me.

Deaf

Trans

ASD

ADHD

Queer

I work for the world but inefficiently.
Constantly crying and breaking down.

                              "Pitiful adult
                                                      Absolute burden"

It goes on and on.
This intersectional conundrum.
It's me. I'm the problem.

I can see where I'm worth.
So It's not me that's a problem.

It's the world that has no step stool.
The people like me know what I mean.

Praying despite disbelieving.
Lord how could I work through this?

Might as well.
Or no.

What if it's not enough?
Oh, I suppose it's not enough.
Never enough.

to hold onto another's
                   vehicle body
                       another's
               flush living corpse
to treat a companions form
       as life cradle
         a giant fostering dummy
          to break open your emotion
         and evacuate in their presence
       to collapse privately into their fold
    and be vulnerable to them
  as though they held
a wattled pouch of birthing elation

to hold a stranger even....
a rotor of deposing energy
because you've been managing
                 your own energies
              so so very inefficiently

grab your 'friend'
pour your familiarities
                ebb and flow
               for comfort
             for mouthing
          for mothering
      and perhaps
something more vigorous

       the parting
         cold embarrassment
          that nesting ill fettle
           when you doubt
the genuine spirit of the liaison
             embarrassed
      cold
and milky human
         out a strange door
           into hard light
  and the painful abrasion
  of the common weather