I lost the ***** that held my world together
There is no finding it now
And yes, I looked between the cushions of the couch
I prepare to run because
Like water through a busted dam it is coming
Like the pain of a stubbed toe it arrives in a furious instant
That asks for select curse words to be shouted
But so unlike pain in my toe, it does not fade
My world comes crashing down
The clouds in the sky fall
As dust onto my outstretched fingertips
(They hope to catch a bit of my falling world)
The atmosphere caves in
The air pressure intensifies
Until it has wrapped me
In a straight-jacket and
I
Am  
Paralyzed
I Search for your comforting eyes as you
Distantly ask me if I am okay I’m not
Okay but I cannot
Open my mouth
For the words to say because
I cannot move an inch to save you
Let alone myself
I couldn’t even save a
Word document right now
I try to scream but  
I
Can’t
Speak
And my world is crashing down
The water from the busted dam
Hits me like a concrete wall
My useless straight-jacketed body
Is swept away  
The water washes away all emotion  
I
Can’t
Feel
The sound of my demise is so loud
In my ears
I cannot hear you any longer
I
Can’t
Hear
The lack of oxygen
In my brain
Turns off the light  
I cannot see the stars
I
Can’t
See
Water everywhere
World crashing down
I
Am
Drowning
My heart beats too
Fast
Fast
Fast
I don’t have enough air to
Last
Last
Last
World
Crashing
Down
I
Can’t
Move
Can’t
Speak
Nor
Feel
Hear
See,
I
(Gasp)
Can’t
(Gasp)
Breathe.

I once left my heart in the pocket of a saint
blinded by sunset light, drunk from midnight madness,
and falling into the monotony of broken dandelion stems and lost eyelash wishes-
I didn’t think I would need it much longer
The burden of rebirthing beats continuously
stamping out the keys
Of my empty piano chest –
As I held onto the breaths of broken warriors
Sponging the blood off their slashed

double
layered
skin

And praying
they could keep their fight for just

One
More
night

He never noticed the extra beat
added to the twitches of his time-ticking body
deaf from the ringing calls to heroism
only on the odd hours he didn’t have muffled
by the recipes of the women he’d saved
buying out bravery like it could shield his soft tongued love
leaving nothing but the clothes on his back
woven from stardusted bomb shelters
And
left over hopes
selling the silver lining of every breath he took
just to buy the next broken-bar girl a drink

He was a saint after all --

born from the innocent hopes I wish I still had,
tucked in the corners of sun-freckled smiles
and
Mothering seatbealt arms
and
Careless Carnival Food
the kind I know some of my soldiers withered against
writhing their souls from the bodies they had been straight jacketed too
prisoners of war stuck in the memory
of just how many calories a sugared funnel cake could have
did have
will have
add up to the self worth shot out of their chest
from last nights uncontrolled binge
of two apples and a cheerio promise ring

No,
he had never been in the middle of the war
never known the taste of blood
rusting in the rain of covered up skin
drenched in the salt water stings of failure
peeling away the scabs of
addictive adrenaline disadvantages
and mapping the battle plan of tomorrows attack
against an enemy so close
it was breathing the same air your lungs had not finished purifying

No,
his hands had never held the dyeing breaths of a comrade in arms
as they shook from the fears riding up their spine
praying the poison won’t take
praying the stolen bottles didn’t break
and that violent vomiting viguals
might burn just enough of the alcohol mistake
so their blood won’t have to curdle

No,
he had never heard the desperation
of sobbing secretes suddenly swindled
from between the lips of a girl who never wanted to remember
the night that never happened
one year, five months, fourteen days --
and three hours ago
her father had asked her why she never wore skirts anymore
and why she never brought boys over anymore
and why she never left her room anymore
and why her silent cheekbone cry for help never smiled anymore

No.

A saint is never found on the battlefield
never scared by the everlasting burns
of war paint psychiatric wards
and gun powder therapy sessions
sprinkled with the hope against hope moments that maybe
we’ll have a break through --

Like the ****** morning sun rebirthing the beats
of duck taped dreams
and
medicated eyes
and
catatonic lips --

I left my heart in the pocket of a saint
confessing the sins of the hopeless hospital it fueled
between our silent lipped kisses
squeezing out the stories of unnamed soldiers
between our woven fingers
and betraying my fear
in the tremble of my body against his –
I left my heart with him on the one-night-stand whim
that I would grow deaf to the sound
of TAPS played on my piano rib keys
and
blind to the specks of blown dandelion wishes

But I still hear the echoes of them
rattling against the stitching
of his bomb shelter pockets

and I wonder if he’s still searching for me
between the crumpled recites of midnight mass mixers
and
open cathedral whispers

because I still think of him sometimes
absent mindedly pick pocketing saints for smiles
but I’ve only found lint and regret
tucked in the corners of their heroic attempt
to protect the bruised hearts of the saviors
who haven’t quite yet found salvation

At the ending of the world
there is a great unraveling
that celestial bow, wound into heartsong
and maestrate the caring music of things--
with these passions of the mind,
God seeking to unravel himself in the ever-fleeing
moment of philosophy, a Persephonic instance
in the archetype of love, psychotic and misnamed,
strait-jacketed in sin and given nothing but sweet
momentary decay

all the powerful souls connect sexually with the cosmos--
payed off, bastardized with a cigarette between their whispered lips
we hold no wealth but the ever-shifting dollar of life.

Fat Jack, fondly Catholic with angel smiles-- holds a rock of God in his hand, rocking softly
in god's busted gut-belly
spread like butter amongst the stars, asking all the same questions of Nirvana--
The last rumble of a skin-tight drumskin wrapped within a screaming symphonic twang of remnant souls--
Walking the notochord of corporeal form
the fantastic drone of rotorcraft, taunting the angelic lads and their brigadier God, singing psalms of limerence
Charlie Parker, musical sadness
Jack-man gladness
Don't forget them in the moment of monastic incantations

High-risen pyramidicals
Euclidian pitter-patter against the gusts and rains
in familiar, repetitive shapes the droplets of ichor
elucidate the frowns of downtown humanity
the locked door at the edge of the room, the air evacuated in fear,
seeking safety in the favorite belfry of an ancient wailing abbey
the dusty oil-towns of century ago
Imbibes the modern-day Maricopa plain
folk digging for dino-rock and black gold, selling dreams to downtrodden lost boys
the mistakes of RV park families

Farmland road
in Louisiana brew
the atmosphere, keeping personal thoughts trapped
a high-pressure zone
the ever-wandering
churning winds of eventual hurricane
the sequence that tickles Fibonacci's fancies and
calls us to dream--
a great Babel of God's consistent scattering heart.

in this great combustible chamber, loud obnoxious gaseous veils
in a low sigh our precipitate souls
smog on the failed shackles of stale blood
dripping this oil on the lips
holding friendly smiles
hiding sickening grins
callous, angry, the honey-chalice sought be not by man or God
alike;

Charlie Parker, playing the world's instrumentation
a track to follow
faded as the ancient road roaming
Rome's wet snail trail
blinking and shimmering into existence
a dewlit morning
the conglomerate rock is a cradle for human discomfort
admitted and hidden
to be a better hold than the hands of the earth
in these cornmeal roads,
digging out sugars from her *****
and sipping on the liquor of life in classic fermentation

to hold the road in your hands, the world on your lips
to tell the catacombs of love you would be her hostess,
seeking answers in the bones of ancient souls and refining
in deep sighs,
loving the things we cannot be.

An abyss that echoes shrieks of eagles circling above:
the moon lies smashed in her sunken depths by nights,
this pit of enveloping darkness, a vessel emptied of life.

Brick by brick, aeons layer her walls, who knows when
she was dug? she carries fragrances of primordial waters
gathered in the heart of earth to the winds of the present.

Long before Joseph's well, she stood when desert land
was verdant wood, and before the earth was tread
asunder by the chariot, this graveyard of the stars.

Plunder she has seen, and abuse as she towers over the past.

Not a wellspring, emptied dry, but a bowl abegging.
The bowl that gave a creed to a continent?
Caravans pass by disgraced crevices remnant
of that era, gone long of stone. Effeminate, she pawned
her bricks over for a life. Or a well to collect the dead,
frightened by the hundreds by the colonial bullet.

Rise and fall, she carries in her wheel of life, her spoked zero.
Of which yet arises a homespun yarn of dreams.

Darkness wells forth from this abysmal chasm, and her
waters cause feuds by brother to brother. Men of straw,
of whom in a few years, no trace would remain,
yet remain and the dove that flew the night a tryst was made
still challenges the jacketed savant on Parliament square.
A pair of inverted eyes guard the gates of darkness.

And now and again, you see yet a star
shooting out to the skies again from the waters: to the moon,
a mushroom cloud, a circling satellite, and an octet notes.

She's not one well: her waters brackish, are
a thousand islands, that came together under the shadow
of an empire on whom the sun never sets.
Count the roots of the banyan, trees.
Her sons grow weak and lumpen. Her daughters rise.
And so she endures, this ancient mother.

In her depths, on the day, when the star of David is reversed,
she endures the ******* reversed, that shined in her of ages ago.
Of men, two quarters great, arise from the same shadow:
The eagle on the west, and the dove on the east.
The not is the all, the zero is everything.
Eternity, two zeros conjoined.

Random mortar shells in the afternoon.
Sparkling, steel jacketed rain drops,
Glinting rainbows of reflected sunlight.
Plastic explosive seat cushions upon which passers-by,
Rest their weary bones.
C-4 candy bars, nuclear toothpaste,
****** for dessert.
Orphanage flambe', hospital hash, blood pudding.
Human burgers sizzling on a smart bomb bar-b-que grill.
Finger food, toe jam, baby-back ribs.

Bureaucratic double talkers,
Sugar coated body counts,
Colateral stew.
Really deplorable, awfully sorry,
But it was their own faults trying to put on raincoats.
They declined our invitation to the cook-out.
Bad luck to open an umbrella in the house.

Remotely piloted funeral processions.
Radar guided hearses.
Televised in real time.
Precision, surgical,
neutralized, deterrent, disarmed,
Deactivated, stand down, eliminate.

Living pawns on a battlefield checkerboard.
Strategic, defensive,
Dominate, annihilate,
Acceptable loss, public opinion pole.

Listen to the tinkling of sabre blades,
Rattling windchimes,
In the warm breeze of the shockwave,
Accompanied by the drumbeat of detonation and concussion.
Rock...
        ...and heads will roll.

Holy, blessed,
Patriotic, brave,
Courageous, dedicated,
Heroic, dutiful,
Self sacrificing...
                         ...******.

I woke up to find my padded bed, upon a padded floor,
Walked outside to find myself between some padded walls

I stood in the pill line adjacent to the kitchen sink,
And took my daily dosage, so that I wouldn’t think.

I drove along the padded streets to meet someone who’d say,
That nothing here is padded, you simply think that way.

Along the padded sidewalks, I saw my protected peers
Hobble along in straight jackets, to protect them from their fears.

I took my third pill today, then lay in my padded gloom,
I thought not to inflict myself, for how would I in this room?

The only thought that met my mind was that tomorrow, like today,
Would protect me from my sadist acts, to which I am enslaved.

I decided that before I sleep, I’d take a little stroll,
But take dosage before such action, to keep me in control.

In the park I sat myself, upon a padded seat,
And watched my jacketed friends try to make their lives complete.

And before I left that painless park, I saw a man beside,
Who wore no such straight jacket, and stood not in the pill line.

I asked him “How have you such freedom? Do you not fear what you could do,
If you found something sadistic, although they come in few?”

He said to me “Now listen, I know that you can see,
All the pads and pills they give to keep us from our humanity.”

I looked at him and wondered, then asked “But what’s too do?
We’re all tight in our straight jackets, all of us, but you.”

He told me we must fight it, and I let release a grin,
And said, “If you cannot see the army, however will you win?”

He cleared his throat and smiled with me, then said with careless ease,
“There’ll be riots in the asylum, when we discover that we share the same disease.”

A box junction,dysfunctional miscommunication,down by the station in one more of its type,a shattered crack pipe and a broken down motormouth man,spanning the distance between here,over there,swiping the air,******* his pants,ranting at rainbows,begging from strangers,
he's just another of the night time ghost rangers,a shadow that falls off imagination and walled off behind solidified dried up and **** out hot dreams that appeared to be real,in the stealing of childhood in the big world bad wild hood,where the good don't die young but are used as the fate bait for just wait and see state, you get in,when you stick the pins in your veins,bleed drain fluid cleaner, how keen are you now?

How the mighty have risen to be crushed,cast aside on the mad ride to stardom in the Kingdoms of blinged up and blind men,
dazzle me, quick me,me brain's oh so sick me,
and sometimes I wonder
and sometimes I don't.

I won't make apologies to pygmy type minds who only find it within them to carp,criticise,and as I prise up the mountains to catch moles for my dinner,I ask of my god,just who is this winner that's wrote of on totems?
Poles apart
we start in the middle,fiddle the figures which figures not in the outcome and I come out fighting,
delightful in madness where the sad can't attack me,where the strait jacketed banality of life is finally flushed,where I'm not rushed in decisions,make insightful incisions with obscure ramifications and cut anyway,cut everything away and cast off.

A bit like knitting
but not with wool.

I'm subtle like an atomic bomb
keep my words laid back and calm
my heart is a glass grenade
feel it crack when my love fades
but still, I stayed
but still, I stayed in this charade
and built around a barricade

you know I'd rather talk this out
spent a decade to you devout
by your side through the drought
so quiet we would never shout
but still, I doubt
but still, I doubt the chosen route
and if I'd prefer to go without

(your tongue a jacketed hollow point
we've never gone to bed angry...
but regret, guilt, and empty sadness
is a fragile yet different parallel)

(I suspect my veins course with
plutonium and uranium...
I leak radioactive decay,
my half-life disintegrating)

there's a stillness when I explode
for a moment, time is slowed
you're in disbelief that I'd reload
the same feelings, the same road
but still, I bowed
but still, I bowed to your code
and stayed despite what you showed

my atoms begin anew to divide
no longer stable, can I abide
I feel a part of me has died
when to leave, I must decide
but still, I cried
but still, I cried by your side
until the day I walked out in stride

(your love is a weapon
I've been held at gunpoint for so long...
I never wanted to hurt you
but I can't keep hurting myself, either)

Pigeons are water-birds carved from stoicism.
When feet approach, they disperse, reconnect,
and continue, leaving me completely perplexed.

I can never tell the difference
between their calling of mate
and battle for territory.

Both actions are so absurdly similar.
I watch for days, chasing them
and their thirty-yard flights with my coffee in-hand.

I've traveled to the Rockies of Colorado
from the *****, Lower East Side of Manhattan
by rusted, dring-belled and horned bicycle.

Cool winds helped sail me across forest trails
and I slept, albeit briefly, on park bench ports;
they attract my current muses and, in turn, me.

These winter-jacketed birds tend to puff up and coo and dance
in front of one another defending their plumage,
their right to be, where they are, for what fills them whole.

One will stare at another, the other never looks back.
One will bump another, the other never touches back.
One will chase the Other and then gently caress its wings,

as if to stab, "Stay a while, partake in the sidewalk feast."
One wants in, the other out; they both want in
so I'll be headed home now.

we'll travel ever forward
our fragmented bullet
praying for nothing in the way
painting targets on the sky
killing and dying for them
until we all come together one day
when there's no way left to be saved

if there is anything left here
we’ll find it –
dig it out
of the rippling earth,
So we can mold it;
******* –
by the immense pressure
(of the bulldozer)
(of the needlepoint)
pointing
towards our future
(of the system)
caressing the victims
and swaddling the thief’s throat,
                 chest,
straight-jacketed to the depths of
near death
near the light
of the universe expansion
boiling in the brains
of us as human
        and we as human
have worked this earth
to ruin
and died ourselves
from exhaustion

and held in the calm stirring
of waking up every morning—
satin sheets and
pampered hands,
where there’s gas in the car
but it’s not too far
from crumbling
like that bridge that
lost its footing
on a spontaneous
mid-afternoon
swooning,
falling for the
water
being
so….close….
….to flooding.
The dams don’t hold a chance
To the masses
of hands
beating back
I’LL DIE WITHOUT IT
DON’T TAKE AWAY MY MAC; I’ll cry
                 because they’ll die
without swallowing the
puffy blue air
       and breathing the
red diamond
waters.

And the caves
could never whisper
to the drums of those
whose ears beat drums
through their headphones;
the leaves
cant drip on the
                                tongues
that are inside other peoples
mouths

and I wont allow sorrow
to seep in my bones
for all they’ve missed
because while they kissed
the soft bellies
of misfits
I rolled an underwater bull
on its back
so I wouldn’t drown—

if there is anything left here

I’m not sure the soft glitz
would catch the
cones of the greedy
souls diving
for pearls

i’m sure we’ve missed it

Where is my schoolboy?
Where is my bomber-jacketed
          sensate?
The articulate flyer,
The gray-eyed smiler,
The man of God?

The Man sitting in the chair...
colourful jacket...funky...
The one you call 'Professor'....
He's not a saint, He's made mistakes..
He's as stubborn as they come,
Pompous,arrogant,ambitious...
Maybe a millionaire...maybe not....
But He's priceless to me.

And while He's there...
please bear in mind,
He'll drive you to despair...
He'll flirt...He'll joke...
He'll smile that perfect smile...
But He'll help...He's generous...
Sweet....
He's totally aware of his faults...
and proud of what he's achieved...

And that makes him so human...
Handle him with care...
But beware,
He's my Muse...Mine only...
So,strange woman,don't you go
stroking his jacketed arm...
Not unless you can be Me,
the one that creates ballads
on Him...
Paws off...
He's priceless to me...

As one of the blue-jacketed workers
As a defiant student
As a child of poverty
Who never had a bicycle to ride to the Sorbonne

I repudiate your vivid red flags
And your graduate-school keyboard revolution
And your catalogue of cliches’ and cant
And your crawling housefly symbolism

As one of the blue-jacketet workers
As a defiant student
After an all-night shift in the plastics factory
I like my cuppa Earl Grey tea in my bleeding hands

Someday I’ll have a bourgeois balcony
And from it look down on your stereotypes

Ah ! If your blue then it's me too !
We can go to the Zoo
And see a blue back gazelle
Or go to Cape May
And get ***** that are blue
Watch out for those pinchers !
Those blue tennis shoes are paper thin
Then we can go to the show
And see "Blue Lagoon"
Then we can go for a drive
To the Blue Ridge Mountains
Stop and eat at the Blue Star Cafe
Then from a mountaintop
We can watch the flow of a river blue
Then you can lay your head on my
Blue corduroy jacketed shoulder
And I will sing to you ,"Love Is Blue"

Thats Right its gandhi's country
Proving intolerance to the person who called us so.
Shirtless actors and leather jacketed alcoholics are fine
But a girl in a short skirt,"thats a ***!!"

We got the best soil and a heavy talent.
Also the most ingenious minds and the best gene pool.
still hunger and poverty grab us like bugs
and we're wannabe amercians coz we thinks its cool.

walks a man alone, walks a man tall.
but the whole ******* country, hell bent on proving him wrong.
im no more scared of the darkness outside,**** it!
coz  those my brothers who put me on a ship to the inchcape rock.

corruption, treachery,scams and money laundering
but demonetisatin,coz notes are the real problem isnt it?
"WE THE PEOPLE OF INDIA,HAVING..."
oh please would you cut the *******?

there can be peaceful processions and hunger strikes
but who cares when we can burn buses and **** children
nepotism is the real trend today
also true talent- that aint nothing worth a million!

Where the head is held high,and the mind is without fear,
applies to the evil, rich or the cruel.
we can have the largest domes and the biggest missiles,
where cast based reservation still prevails withe suicides as a fuel.

Mob lynching is a everyday problem now,also rapes.
it goes on to anti nationalism, corruption and prostitution.
And here is gandhi's country,much like this sonnet
with only problems and no real solution.

New Year’s Eve
and the clatter of suitcase handles
defying the quiet car
concerning the woman in the seat beside me
silently screaming
into her teeth.
Pop! Pop! The train is under attack
the assault we fled from our point of origin follows us as
chaos kids chuck
firecrackers on the rails,
new worries, same as old and
further furrowing the silent screamer.
The air is must, jacketed bodies still heaving
from the sprint to catch the train
now sweating in repose and slipping off their winter shells and
no one is comfortable
so you know we must be traveling.
Someone cracks a window to combat the stale air,
sliced bread eaten plain & crumbs crumble the floor
furrowing brows yet further.
We’re all going somewhere
as our minds trace where we’re coming from
collectively and silently screaming
“THIS YEAR WILL BE DIFFERENT”
and most of us now sporting
furrowed brows
as the train pulls us inevitably forward
towards the future.

Sunroof open
AC off
Music cascades off the doors
and the floors
and escapes through the open windows
to bless all within earshot

Eyes jacketed behind
A fresh set of shades,
making the blues and greens pop
to the beat of the wind in my eardrums

Cool
crisp
breeze settling on my face
with a touch of sun
sending a warm glow down
to the very core of my soul.
It's my day like Claypool said.
What's better than Primus
on a fresh Spring day?

The leaves
on the trees
Remind me of newborns that can barely lift their heads;
unfurling
growing
reaching out to touch the sun
like Superman getting his groove back.

Buds bursting with color
like the fourth of July.
What a beautiful day…
It's great
to be out on a drive...

My usual seat is taken

A thin man
Opens his Stella

It's 7.40am

School boys play music
Out loud on their phones
In the quiet carriage

I feel lost

Over stretched
Straight-jacketed
By my lifestyle

Struggling, trying and failing
To keep it all together

I am losing
And winning
In my belief

I notice the sun
Shining
Whether clouds confront it or not
And I think
So what if it’s tough
Just keep fighting

The day is long

I finish work
The ticket office is closed
The police are everywhere

Attack with a noxious substance
They say


I walk home

She was Lead. Jacketed with Steel and Copernickle. She was so weighted and dragging in movement, one could not be sure she's been standing still her whole life. Waiting, as if packaged on a shelf. Her own mass betrays her, every day. Exhausted from fighting her own weight to reach very high, or step too fast.
She was as shocked as anyone, when the package was opened, and she removed.
She had as little idea as anyone, what would occur when he, like a practiced marksman, skillfully loaded her, knowing just where to aim..
and he shot her, with a bang her bullet  sped fast outwards and streaking through debree and walls and hearts and nature.
Structures big and small her bullet punctured,
it was a marvel, the bullet would not stop.
Never ricochet,
perhaps it would circle the earth.
perhaps it would break the atmosphere.
anyone who's anyone
walks with shielded head
for the answer was not clear.
Anyone who's anyone only knew,
that when her bullet was fired, her bullet, would not stop.

In the bloom of youth, we were all awkward and weird
and contrived in our own inexplicable and ineluctable ways.

We were all sunglassed fictions, heroes in our own heads
and less than that in the slow gnaw and chomp of reality.

We might croon, leather-jacketed, about the dawn before a disinterested audience of wights, hollow-eyed and resigned.

We might jam on a Casio keyboard atop a file cabinet
and hope, idly, someone, someday, might eventually get it.