My legs are shaking as I step
Onto a frozen lake
In skates that are not my own.

He grabs my hands
and whirls me in a wide circle
I scream and beg for him to stop.

He leaves me for a while
to wobble slowly
on my own.

Then he returns with a shopping cart
And dumps me in it
To push me across the lake

At an alarming rate.

With tears in my eyes
I beg him to stop.

I know I am being jettisoned
Towards my death.

I remember the bed just floating there.

Apart, apart, apart, apart.

If you repeat something over and over again it loses its meaning

For example:

Homework, homework, homework, homework, homework, homework, homework, homework, homework

See, nothing

Our existence?

It's the same way.

You watch the sun set too often, it just becomes 6 PM

You make the same mistake over and over

you'll stop calling it a mistake

If you just

wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up,

one day you'll forget why

Nothing is forever

I last saw my mom when I was four years old

Before the last argument they sent me off to the neighbor's house,

like some astronaut jettisoned from the shuttle.

When I came back there was no gravity in our home, beds floating

I imagined it as an accident, that when I left

We whispered to each other "I love you" so many times over

that they forgot what it meant

Family, family, family, family, family, family

If you repeat something over and over again it loses its meaning

This became my favorite game

It made the sting of words evaporate.

Separation, separation, separation;

see, nothing

Apart, apart, apart;

see, nothing

I am an injured person now

I work with words all day

Shut up, I know the irony

When I was young, I was taught that the trick to dominating language

was breaking it down

Convincing it that it was worthless

I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you..

...See, nothing

Soon after I left I developed a stutter

Fate is a cruel and efficient tutor

There is no escape in stutter

You feel the meaning of every word drag itself up your throat

S-s-s-separation

Stutter is a cage made of mirrors

Every "Are you ok?"

Every "What'd you say?"

Every "Come on kid, spit it out"

Is a glaring reflection you cannot escape

Every terrible moment skips upon its own announcement

Over and over until it just hangs there,

floating in the middle of the room

Mom, ........

....Dad?

I am not wasteful with my words anymore.

Even now after hundreds of hours of practicing away my stutter,

I still feel the claw of meaning in the bottom of my throat.

I have heard that even in space;

You can hear the scratching of a

I-I-I-I love you.

We have ventured from the start
and lost sight and broken apart, but
there is a way to live without
hearing heartbeats as ticking clocks
shouting of times past;
we sat side by side through every class
and we’re not done learning. Our
gravestones are jettisoned from the shuttle,
floating there goes gravity but
even shadowed from the sun by so much,
we clutch at moons to make our own light
on our own planet. We
could keep going now,
could stop each other from falling
and keep marking our heights
against the wall even though
they stopped changing long ago
because we didn’t
and instead of accumulating
the weight of years and days
we could find a way to keep getting lighter
the farther we get from the beginning
we are finite
but there went gravity
cause of death: life

cast out
chucked away
deep-sixed
discarded
discharged
disposed of
expelled
flung aside
thrown down
jettisoned
deserted
jilted
vacated
left in abdication
aggravated
outcast
rejected
eliminated
forgotten
given­ up
godforsaken

by guess and by god, headstrong,
a recklessly charted course.
ruled by intuition and ammunition
we were captains together--but then the weather!
clouded our stars, washed away our vision, tore our sails.
my captain! i was desperate!
for you: i jettisoned my heart, threw overboard my sensibility,
let out all my rope until the Bitter End.

but you mean to abandon ship!
after all we've sailed through, and you mean to abandon ship.
you've left me with the devil to pay,
but instead i'll swallow the anchor, i'll swallow it whole.
forgive my mutiny,
but a dead captain is no captain, and the sea does own my soul.

The paratrooper
clad in chlorophyllic green
stoic in resolve he leaps
jettisoned from lofty perch
spiraling in space
tumbling through time.
Airborne
born into the air
delivered to the dirt
he dies, decomposes
a casualty of consequence
body brown and rotting in the rain.

Wars are waged and seasons change
and the world spins on in spite of all.

your heart will not fail in space
it will be an object of its own mass
and gravity
no longer will there be a throttle in its vessels
and asynchronicity in its rhythms—
the beats, oh, the beats
your heart, when it is in space, will only wait
for an entity
to be jettisoned from a shuttle

my oxygen is running low
i love you to your heart and never back

Tales told to me by my grandmother of  the Duende.
as the campfires danced . The black leopard
stood far back in the trees

A ghost in the machine as we describe it today.

Jettisoned by the sun gods
for knowledge of self one little elf.

Now Boogeyman
Hobgoblin.
Troll. A manifestation of all men fear.
To walkabout and scurry in the pale moonlight.
The Duende awaits  the ship in the night sky
lift him up away to the
end of time.

-

Greetings,

I am the empty chair you just recently
pushed into the carport like some unruly
child made to stand in a corner.

Not a new chair for sure,
but you made me Your chair
by the force of gravity,

transforming my cushion into
perfect contours in the image
of your ***.

Though you were always careful
if crumbs fell into me to get up
and brush them away,

and instead of just plopping down
******* me, you sat gentle and easy,
even if only doing so to soften the
shock for yourself,

there were moments as you sipped beer
you let it slip through your bottom lip,
dripping on me with bitter aftertaste.

Still, I was forgiving of that, and even
to those numerous occasions of you
venting your evening meals.

But the one event that forever sullied our
personal relationship was the morning you
woke on me soaked in most of the past
evening's              
                ~~brew

Though you tried to patch things up
with towels and scented sprays,
we were never to look upon
one another with the
same recognition
again.

I know now the days for me here number
far less than the buttons of the controller
you so frequently lost between my cushions,
giggling me in your efforts to retrieved it.

Although our separation will mean for me a
transformation into a twisted pile of springs,
stuffing, splinters and ripped cloth within the
bucket jaws of a front end loader in the snow,

I can take some comfort with me to the
resting pits of jettisoned human folly that
our severance was of no fault of my own.

yours truly,
Chair...


s jones
2007-2020


.

When people ask what I do for a living,
I respond

“Listening to my heart ******
as my mind garden blossoms
incandescent indigo constellations
humming the songs of nature’s entirety.

I sensually embrace the entirety’s
divine lips kissing my spirit
with sacred words
merging into me—
a blissful osmosis of neurotransmitters
waltzing with my consciousness
flowing liquid electricity
and molten rhythms of oxygen
in kinetic unison through moments
of subjective apocalypses
slowly returning to yugen.”

When asked where I see myself in ten years,
I respond

“Copacetic contentment—
having surrendered my life
to more than just the digital currency
of likes and retweets
and the constantly dissolving paper coins
because I chose to see people
as breathing pieces of naked art,
in progress,
stripped down to their thoughts
jettisoned through this spherical time
of infinite space and possibility
slowly accepting there is more out there
beyond traditional political religical flimflam,
beyond abnormal logicality,
beyond nirvana.”

Part One

One day while in high school (am now out of college) I, Mattias,
went over to my best friend Joey's house. When I got there, as
usual, he was working; he's a nut job, or better known as a handy
man during the summer, but keeps up the big old house where Joey's
family, (Mom, Dad, five daughters and one son, Joey, the youngest) eat, sleep, and amortize the dwelling mercilessly where it's in
constant need of maintenance. e.g.: 5 girls, all girly girls and
their mother = 6 females, copious use of the room where one
rests (rest room), an enormous amount of toilet paper with all
that other female stuff that is jettisoned down the commode.
This impaction desperately attempts to navigate an old, cast iron,
privately owned (not city) sewer line and sewage system.

So one can see,
and smell, huge problems, almost daily. Btw: they have five
bathrooms. One can only connect the dots to each one of
these strategic stink-bomb sites and see a pungent, pontifical,  stanky  mess on their hands. Half the time a
bathroom is cordoned off with yellow tape, like, where's
the detective? A crime has been committed in this bathroom
by a bunch of
females.
Strangely enough, the olfaction in this old castle didn't seem to
bother these girls. As long as it was their crap, all mixed together,
they all are of the same bloodline, who cares? It was almost as
if they liked the smell, since it was theirs. It was creepy, but
these girls were so good looking it didn't matter to me. Joey
would laugh as he could see how I was enamored with them all.
Yeah, I didn't mind hanging at Joey's house. His sisters:
their beauty; was through
the roof. They were cool
inside too!

So Joey is pretty indispensable in their household. He has tons
of other jobs, paid ones, to perform, but maintaining the five
bathrooms for these girls and the two men of the household was
a full time non-profit summer job, except for expenses; how quaint?

Part Two

This one particular day I stop over,
                                                       like I do almost daily; cut
through the open garage to their entry.
                                                       Joey knew I was coming
so both glass and fire door were unlocked.
                                                       ­ I walk in, shut the latch
to the glass door and saunter straight
                                                        ­into the Kitchen and
see Joey fishing through his junk drawer
                                                        se­arching for a bolt. He
said he was working on the plumbing in
                                                        one of the bathrooms.

The next thing I know, one of the neighbors in the culdesac of
which they live, Mrs. Turigliato, knocks on the door and tries to
open it but the latch is locked. The old fire door was open, so I
could see her. I waved and walked over to open the glass door.
Says Mrs. T, “Oh hi Mattias.” I reply “Hello Mam.”

She locomotes by me with coffee
in one hand, cream and sugar dripping
on her robe and coffee droplets free-falling
onto the VA tile floor with little splatters.

A tiny planet is being hit
by mini nuclear bombs, yikes!

She approaches Joey; he's scrambling and rummaging
through their seriously versatile junk drawer for the
right size bolt to perform surgery in one of the rooms
with a bath (bathroom). She cackles,
“Hi Joey, whatcha looking for?”

Part Three

Stop here a sec!**

If Joey would have said “I'm looking for a bolt” this story
would be over. In fact, there would be no story except a big house
with a sick septic tank on private property not run by the city.
Instead, he says “I'm looking for a *****?” While we both
(Joey & I ) might have quietly chuckled, Mrs. T's response
was a bit more than I could handle at this delicate age. Says Mrs.
Turigliato, “Go see Trudy, she will give you a *****.” Trudy was
our age, Mrs. T's daughter, and she was hot, but this was too much,
my abs were killing me. It doesn't end there:

Our mouths are tongued tied shut; taut. Unbelievably, Mrs. T
presses on;

“I'm serious Joey. Go, right now, and get a ***** from Trudy.”

At this point we were holding it in, suffocating, choking, yearning
for oxygen. Eggs and bacon started to make their way up my throat. I couldn't take this. We both quietly gather some air.
Not a ******* word from Joey or I,
Mrs. T is on an oblivious roll:

“Don't you want to get a ***** from Trudy, Joey?”

I can only imagine poor Joey's mind, thinking “Yes Mrs. T, but not the type ***** you're thinking about.”

We stay quiet, not a word..... then the miracle. Joey says “I found the right bolt.”
Hearing the word bolt and not ***** evoked an inquisitive, clueless, look from Mrs. T, her painted and pointed brows scrunching up and taking on new formations, but out came no words. She turned around and waved good bye, never saying why she came over or what she needed. Joey's Mom wasn't home but Mrs. T didn't even ask or say what she wanted. Strange ****.

Conclusion

Being a few years later, Joey and I still laugh our **** off when one of us tells this story. Even at parties, dudes and girls go nuts. Maybe some day it will be one of those “you would have had to be there” stories to maintain its staying power, but so far both Joey and I have gotten dates from girls at parties after we tell this story. I guess they like something about it. That's cool with me. Mattias is my name, and my best friend is Joey.
________

Flippant polymaths exude the frippery of travail for lapsed inordinate surgical gains in temporal but temporary acclaim that owes its provenance to the gullarge accentuated by the guttural tempests of silent windfalls that wrestle with sharks and snarky cagamosis with pilfered fame without rulers for rules that own the profligacy of a cineaste game

We cannot surpass our talents with ease when the treecheese of inevitable distance between equipoise and insanity is a tantamount inanity of prolixity for the sake of freedom rather than servitude to the slow meandered steps of trudged verbigeration that needs to be exorcised from the seat of authority for the plodding inconvenience of time earned that shakes the listless yearning people who lie and spurn

Demagogues are trifles because they are anoegenetic and care not for the abligurition that consumes the energy of a dismal life lived on fringes rather than reaped with grimaces for binges that continue to absorb the painful pangs of twinges that hedonists are of interest

We cannot exorcise the demons that give stygian weight to exchequers beyond the gamut of money but rather the currency of velocity of thought that owes its weight to weightlessness of spaces between the spacious and the limited tract of isolative territory that many mendicants looking for sustenance travail in insolence and in perjury of their solemn duties for self-serious honesty they lack a vista to see their crimes as more than just a pettifoggery of disputatious wranglers that wrench and then contemn the objects of their moral scruples to contend with nothing but the vacant expanse of a limitless injury for a momentary slip of cultivation and countenance

Frippery is hard to cobble with lapidary wit because succinct grievances are fallow ground for the permanence of atrocity and the temperance of felicity to conform to the desiccated pathways of limpid but livid excoriations of willful ingenuity met with aleatory rambles that sprawl incalescence with words as a dying occupation that is resurrected from the abeyance of its pragmatic utility to distinguish class from crust.

The triadic fatuousness of snarky sharks recruiting the gullarge of paranoiacs to deputized alacrity lead many strident vocations astray as they pilfer the nullibiety of spectral ignorance and defy the gravitas of the primiparas of a swollen technocracy, an outrage that scarecrows with prevenance have adumbrated against with strident accelerations of sublime velocity

So we swim in perilous straits against the demiurge of inclemency in fated rittles for the turpitude of wraiths and engineer every aborning day a new foofaraw of unalloyed atrocity
Now more than never should be deployed to ensure that the castigation of scoundrels and guttersnipes that exert a rip tide to those stranded on the shores of littoral desiccation might find the pristine beachgoing public an amenable treat proffered by exorcised sheepishness in reiterative bleats that quarkswarm only the antinomy of sentient masteries by shoveled civilizations proctor to horological insistence in design

So we designated an abeyance of heydays to create a rippled nostalgia that creeps in the winter storms that singe even glabrous ignorance with the twinges in absentia of the regal crows that circle the sun as the sustenance of the alighted moon as we reach for the heaved Richter teeming with ablution for venial commination of prolix croons that exert a Palo Alto rhyme

Phenomenological fields distal to the cephalocaudal origination of limber and the ironic counterpoint to that strife in excess rather than dearth of the henchmen behind the exchequer showcase that fluid thoughts surpass the limits of the dentistry of cosmetic cosmology simultaneously a scientific boon but a coarse albatross

We are criminals in a world stranded by ****** apostasy because of the sincerity of minstrels meets plodding human ignorance as exemplars rather than the apotheosis of divine excoriation of wastrels and flattybouches who webdoodle their way into the extinction line in some computer file swiped from eccedentesiasts who often in uncouth barbarity forgetfully abide without the temperance of floss

So what are we to make of magisterial wits of wiseacres who pilot tenable objectives like Indiana Jones flexing his comical whip when the gunfire of cacophony inundates our ears with a lisp of cockalorum imposture rich in chewing tobacco and its ungainly gripes and tenacious grip

Should we seek salvation from the treecheese of arboreous terrain amenable to the newfangled windfall of agricultural whims that dare now with caprice but not quixotic disdain to reconfigure the parsimonious levered engagement of melliferous fungible transaction between sabbaticals and chief financiers dubbing the vociferous limn of the primeval fulgurant incandescent ethereal quips?

We strive for palaces issued with dimes, dozens and scores of retinues that retain the patina of sophistry as the gullarge makes the vangermytes cozy in their defensively mechanized citadel buffered against the unheralded malversations of mammon intersecting with primordial chemistry that give the philanderer a guise of philanthropy despite professed gainsay that perjures because hucksters are winsome with fiduciary risk

So we calumniate with lapsed puns and Potter’s Spells as we dredge the indemnity of bustling heydays that extend beyond the bailiwick stated because of the prolonged trace of nostalgia that frazzles our voluntary expeditions with misanthropy as each libertine instinct becomes subject to stop and frisk

How to balk at such a garrulous repartee as proffered by swanky intransigence that shakes it off in a quaky town that hates the Swift refrain that endangers the fatalism of recuperated foresight borrowed from the armamentarium of corrupted killjoys who swim in a dalliance with the itchy myths that drift from powerlessness to voguish debauchery of insouciant internecine fringes frayed by the tomes that decry Stygian drift

Shiftless and rooted in rintinole absolved by plackiques that enchant the voyeurism of repined squalor of industrious frippery deracinated from the aureate complicity of largesse calibrated to mobilize the skittish mercurial yuppies to a dance with divestiture, taxes and an earthen death, we sprint the evergreen mile toward the scrupulous invention of enthusiastic euphemisms arbitrated by the procrustean silt of the leaky faucet of enigmatic timelessness etched by chiselers to beat “Us and Them” and warn the vanguard of the front rank about the thespian rift

Exhaustive rescue squads prepared for the dearth of monetary heft in times of perilous drought denigrate the authors of famine to the indulgent parents of inordinate sabotage of narrative for riskless arbitrage that is the outrage of sciamachies between platonic indifference and the tantrums of the feckless in the dangerous hearth of the cavernous wilderness of limitless imaginations that stagger so far beyond orbit they become satellites to vagrancy and whittled paragons too distant to dissolve in the ethereal chemistry of incalescent uproar sadly flanged by the Dopplers of ephemeral fate

Squandered by the desuetude of a snarky intervention I issue invective at the proctors of deafferented limbs for barbarous swine meeting expediency in demise, bemoaning the placid distaste of rectified cries that issue candles for each acrimony beyond the permutation of the staid inflexible limit of 88’

Bashfully we careen through argosies of curiosity to fossick the stalactites of timeworn intuition and reckon with their converse ironies that drip faucets of mildew that remain hidden unless poked by plucky flashlights to inspect the paragon of erosive filigrees of a bewildering paradox of polarized design that one meets the ceiling at inception and the cousin strives to clamber empty space to know with faint certainty the bulldozed irony of superordinate coexistence

Now we return to the majesty of a spurned wiseacre that evades the snappy parlance of a wrenched friction between the physical and the metaphysical elements that constitute a commensurate reality so supernal that its ostentation creates lifetimes of reiterative growth that spawns crimson red and bloviated blues to find a fulcrum of balance between the malversation on one hand of criminal sinister machinations and on the other hand the execrable self-righteous ignorance of a hidden vehicles of dexterity that are subsumed by a subtlety of legislative graft that owes its forbearance to the sanctimony of perseveration without the laurels of persistence

Now we wed the concepts between the ambidexterity of a monolithic titan who wanes rather than waxes himself because his glabrous head already exposed requires nothing new because the empire that struck back is denuded by the thorny imbroglio of a sunken Rose

Timmynoggies are perfect for haberdasheries of saccharine and glib excellence as measured by the ****** cacophony of unmerited applause that strains the resourcefulness of the silent mastery of magistrates in mellifluous alcoves surrounded by the soundproofed rigors of an execrable dereliction wilt into the imaginations of the few that watch movies with errantry rather than pleasantries of gaudy nonsense enchanted by a striptease of the wanton zeitgeist that some balk at but everyone knows

Time earns the spangled banners of sloganeering because of the fastidious creations of pole folders that maneuver between quips borrowed from antique movies and swindled affectations of yearning of many of all fears inevitable with the malevolent passage of the technocracy from cheers to vehement inveighed jeers

We should fear the watershed because it necessitates the evaporation of winsome ambition and implores the subservience of a guiltless fascination with abominable regress concomitant to the acceleration of money preceding a whipsawed downfall ensured by the funereal spates of requiems to oneironauts who plunged to their deaths on headlong flickering whims past the craggy landscape of lunar concordance and through the abeyance of qualms to flabbergasted self-importance in the eradication of provident fears

Memorials exist encoded in the temporal twinges of agony that straddle the cardiovascular throbs of impermanence that sweat with each simple beat to blather about the repetitious nature of a livid nature scrambled in exodus of the emigration of senseless blather to the subroutines of regimented sleepless paragons of travail in every pedestrian feat accelerated with each passing foot traversed by vigilant and eager feet

Tempests crowd the cluttered hamartithia of dredged incompetence leading to the foreclosure that precedes the simple derelictions that amount to grievous uncertainties that squawk in the plumage of the frippery decay of an autumnal fall from gracile riches landlocked without room to sprawl rigged against every track that is a surefire gleeful keepsake to meet, greet and serenade the claques adorned with the monikers of the Greeks

Trembling beneath the weight of mellifluous sauntering dingy designs that exude the anguish of our provident but incidental remonstration against the plodding indifference of the artistic clerisy we sputter against intransigent annulments of the emotive human engine calibrated with creaky pistons that rumble with furor of abrasive protest in timely haphazard elemental designs for vanguard ears

Tridents shed the fossicked leaves that are divisible by two but not inevitably glue that solders the identities of people congregated around a situation of gleeful sprees rather than wistful regress into a temerity without regret that gets dangled in the purview of the spiteful wings of armies that drawl when they sing vapid songs for vaped bongs but not the soberly cheers because of the deafening din of conformity oblivious of the honorific crescendos that still peak after so many restless years

Confederates line the avenues of bustling caverns of cumulative human disdain so willfully flouted by the wrenched corrosive frictions of vibrant deformation of the cultural narrative that encapsulates the collective bubbles chewed and jettisoned like bandied candy and then defamed without justice because  hurricanes churn up the reclusive emergence of protective vanity chased down as a sunken cost for a siphoned glory of tribal pride despite the strictures of logic

Creeping with insistence is a subaudition of governing gravel that entombs many steadfast lies that embodied people living delusory lives under a paradigm that has been subverted by the feats of science into a morass of irrelevance and the chances are many of those so deluded still breathe the air now more polluted but balk at the memories of the fallen passengers on the convalescent train that accelerates sunblind but respectfully toward a systematic engrossment of swollen intellects whimpering about the tautologic

We finance our prescient rodomontade with rodeos equipped with zany clowns who spurn the tridents of Poseidon because of the iridescent gloss of sheepish and flippant zealots who churn against the wrestling match of televised irony with accentuated eccedentesiastic disdain amended by a tolerable diversion of ennobled gallantry zip-zagging among the many valid quodlibets and missing the mark entirely on purpose to vacate the possible raillery of those who balk at time’s chosen serpentine tracks because of limited pedagogical tracts

So lets solder a forceful brunt against the senseless regalia of modern omphalos and return to the plenipotentiary fields of resourceful human inquiry into the chagrins outmoded by convenience but amplified in vociferation by the prosthetic extension of a grangull humanity outfoxing itself into a zugzwang inevitable in the future with collateral losses because of senseless invidiousness orchestrated by the immiscible dermatology of divisive facts often about race and ineluctable tax

We conclude with the optimism that refineries become gentrified by the superlunary squadrons who bask in beatific beams of anonymity and that the pollution preceding our evolution is just adventitious rather than central to the amelioration of wavy screens ennobling so many upstarts to teach themselves the majesty of lucid dreams and to capitalize on ludic ideals divorced from the urchins of radical idealisms that ironically poach rarefied air with smug pollution of narrative scares

Without trepidation we can muster the largesse of civility to create a progeny that has a recursive progeny of heirs that defiantly imagine a world bereft of specters of the soporific imagination enforced by the lapidation of insight from termagants who stride with ursine acrimony naked bare and envision a global meliorism that is careful, picaresque, pragmatic and filled with meritocratic care

With those ornaments of an aureate measure in mind


We leap beyond the enumerated infinity in time's proper design

Somebody
had thrown a cassette
of Therapy?'s "Troublegum"
its nicotine-hued tape
mangled like the innards of
a gutted fish, or
so many sprayed limbs
in a crowded car pile-up
-decorating the bare branches
of the winter-stricken trees
which lay beyond the barbed wire fence
that separated the state-supported
and architecturally sound
playground facade of the solitary concrete grounds
-with empty swings-
of our mixed gender primary school
of 200 plus students (whom were
referred to as "pupils"-which reminded me
too much of eyes, but children are all eyes, aren't they?
With golden-hued irises, who seem to remember
everything).

Who had thrown it there?
Smashing all the angst-sodden, ripped guitar reverberations
-the fruits of a few individuals hard grasp and compromise, toiled out through a probable number of significant years-
that had lurked inside?
Why that gesture and why in that place?
Perhaps it had been the jettisoned request
of some clandestine love affair
(ephemerality also lays claims to gifts, to its plural gesture)
or, maybe in a more obviously classical mode,
it was only the result
of a bored friend who cared little for the music
or the efforts behind its delivery?

Whatever the reason,
its one of a handful of memories
that have stayed with me
when my thoughts strayed back to that school
(mostly without an intended purpose).

Also, across the same wasteland
there were assembled corrugated shacks
lined in front of back-garden walls
strewn with illegible graffiti
anticipating the waning rave culture
where we supposed-and were frightened by the thought-
that were the hang-outs of Drug users (AIDS was still a topic then)
and Pedophiles.

But then again,
we never tried to find out.

In a blanket of breath now pleasantly swathed
Our bodies made broken; prostrate in the fog
Exhumed from the boughs of tree-tops so balmy
On alabaster bones that tremble quite calmly
With thoughts of tomorrow, our miasmic today
That in wistful contemplation is thoroughly dismayed
Like the sullen, windy chimes of a church bell that rings
In the hardened heart of winter, on frost-bitten strings
Which frail, arboreal appendages, with nimble purposes pluck
To indulge the dulcet beds, in which our thoughts are tucked
In a licentious yawn that drifts, from scentless, sleepy shrouds
Like azure ships now sailing, through lofty, lilting clouds
Our pendulous hands still pawning these passionate decrees
With fervent fears to consummate your swiftly slumbered vestige
Atop my flesh, all slick with sweat, and in shadows sorely rapt
The mellifluous hum of reverent sight, through keyholes quickened pass
My heart is estranged from the banal constraint of this stagnant mortal coil
Held aloft in the piercing plea of love’s unbidden toil
All visions captive to the subtle sway of your chest now undulating
Like waves that crash, in rhythms vast; my thoughts, they are invading
Urgency deemed, from unconscious form, in sharp pangs of desire
The crease between your lips, the hand heavy on my hip: the nuances in which I am mired
The idiosyncrasies of you like a poem that is repeatedly folded
And jettisoned into my open mind, where these precious admissions molded
Taking form in tangible caress, to envelop with silken shivers
On the sill of windows wide where lonesome flowers withered
Thus proffered throat, in porcelain quiver, where stilted lungs concealed
In tear-wrought arrows, tempered and true, fly with errant zeal
To pin my ruminant heart upon this ragged, beggar’s sleeve
And chain my weightless body, from where it floats among the eaves

a circus once entertained
my hungering muse.

words flourished
from a vibrant quill.

inspiration evaporated
from pages of artwork,
as graphics appeared inferior.

feet paced forward
while left unescorted.

an artistical mind
forgot the words,

it once painted  
in intense colors.

Sling grease into pitch
of doggerel vowel

I'm looking for an "aooga"
sound that diminishes
as if jettisoned by speed of light

whipping sugar cane plantation
slave ghosts' utterances
     paean screams doused

How I wish to be one of the first
followers of Obama to Havana

footfall through tic of time
slow gaits toc of eon
     a Cold War's metrical decomposition

Aooga Aooga
     Rumpapa Rumpapa
          Shucka Shucka Shucka

Everyone is free
and so many of us swim
     an opposite direction

Gyrate feet, hips, Cuba's beaches
     smile, gaze upon maracas
          Shucka Shucka Shucka
     **** on raw sugar cane
      
      Freely
with great abandonment
     and greater ability

The manner of her tongue was a bit antiquated, yet her personality was heretical, rejecting traditions.

She is an ingenious paradox and I'm a little abashed to say that I'm in a state of extol.

However I came to the consensus that I will safeguard her inaudible heart, scorn every hint of dismay, and feed it to the vultures.

I have jettisoned my own grotesque nature, for she is my alleviation.

It might sound querulous, but she is the pinnacle of my languished existence.

The sound of a car alarm,
"Detonating" might not sound inappropriate
Like waking into a fight that's
kicking off-
on Sunday mornings.

This is the realisation
Of how the world intrudes
Of how the the inner sanctum
is detached from the private self.

Car alarms -the drones of greater Western suburbia.

How are we expected to be overwhelmed by life
When we desire all the apps and whistles
Of electronic distraction
to keep our heart rates
Steadily rising?

Seeing a jettisoned supermarket trolley
Abandoned in a riverbed
Close to a church whose peak attendance
Occurs at summer weddings
Explains more about the human capacity for tragedy
Than most schloarly texts on Greek Drama

Surely this the curse of socities who best express sentiments through images?
The ability to make exhibitions out of emotions, of replaying journeys
Without speaking words
Somewhere a girl runs away from home
Somewhere else a boys runs to his bedroom

And even the streetlights betrayed with shattered glass
Make the sound of thunderstorms
on warm evenings.
The moon too bright to decipher as a circle
with unshielded eyes.

The retired vaudevillian engraves his love's epitaph while eating caramelized clusters
The local sodomites huddle around and mourn outside the morgue
Waiting for the body of their **** to be handed over
They've given her body an overhaul
She looks more alive than when she was living
Hobnobbing with the well-to-do

The retired vaudevillian comes to collect the body of his deceased wife
He looks down at the sodomites
For their outlandish appearance and choice of employment has resulted in mistrust

"Oh my love, why couldn't you have been the driver instead of the passenger whose body was jettisoned into the air and smashed upon the asphalt?"
"She could do ten thousand breast strokes, paint masterpieces with one brush stroke"

The sodomites began to taunt the vaudevillian
Calling him washed up
He retorted back calling them toothless heathen ******  
A mercenary was called to end the dispute outside of the morgue
He killed half of the sodomites and tasered the vaudevillian

The undertaker wheeled out the body bag on dolly
But he lost control, and the body went careening down the hill into a cloudy bay
The party of mourners grouped around the bay and watched the body float on to the afterlife
She left behind her has-been husband and her **** ******* cohorts
I bet she would have appreciated this little organized dime store wake

It always makes me wake up when it hits;
When a rivulet of sweat runs between my ****.
I wake up thinking some bug is walking there
Because it tickles my manly bit of chest hair.
Guys are built much different than the rest.
We are not supposed to have issues with our chest.
But here I am trying to get some sleep
Suddenly aware my cleavage is too deep.

Stuff is happening backwards that should not
What we supposed to do with this mess we’ve got?
Something’s got the world all upside down.
God must be a freaky circus clown.
Regardless of some nasty radio rants
I have no problem with women wearing pants.
And in life today as I have always seen
The woman is often the boss, big and mean.

And I have heard, in current affairs and state
That men can even, in time, learn to lactate.
But this one situation in which I have *******
Threatens to unhinge and drive me a bit loopy.
I guess, with time, I will someday get accustomed.
And I know some old ideas need to be jettisoned.
But I never expected that this would be a year
For me to go get fitted for an absorbent brassiere.

Wearing a drab dress, all white,
I see a girl child of about eight
seemingly lost, perhaps left alone to fight
her continuing wars with a callous world,
walking hurriedly all by herself along
a desolate street, that to me seems familiar
yes, it's in the part of the city, once I lived
which always was seen teeming with life
except perhaps in such mystery dreams.

Think of this, don't you in spirit live in many
different places, like hearts of lovers one cherishes
though now one hardly remembers, how
it happened and where it was or how many
different persona constitute, the 'You, you think are You'

Like a somnambulist she walks along  the tree lined street,
I was watching her through a  window set high,
as she passed a young palm laden with coconuts,
and then a strange feeling gripped me and said
"It must be she, standing in this cozy room's warmth
and isn't that I, taking faltering steps along the street,
where she has been never before and don't know
what  awaits her or any other beyond that corner"

Is she a refugee from somewhere, an orphan whom
the world has jettisoned, with nothing to look forward?
An improbable adventurer aged just eight, still
ready to stare a dark, overcast day, on it's face fearless?

I just flew out of the window and was astonished at that feat
and  the speed; who would think I could pull it off?
I flew following her as if fearing for my dear life,
as if she and I have a cryptic connection I forgot,somehow
Where is she?my heart in palpitation,I flow with the wind.

My lone, disheveled skiff is flooded
With moonlight. I am a real-life sea captain,
Wading off the shore of Life.

I have jettisoned my mighty oar,
I now lie on the hull, drowning
In a Champion's brew.

I miss my mates.
I'm sick of reminiscing w/ the stars
Of my friends, my crew,
Our complacency,
And the Great War.

Spring spent
as a sprout
bedridden
in sediment
then edifice jettisoned.

By summer
roots ready,
tendons threaded,
a frenzy of
appendages,
extremities extended.

In autumn
stem shedding feathers,
fallen flower petal treasures,
emerald essence surrendered;
amber bled,
blood letting red,
settling
in ephemeral orange embers.

But winter
December veteran
still remembers
fledgling seeds spreading
instead of this,
condemned
to frigid tether
then again severed
and unfettered;
sun's warmth,
tender benevolence and pleasures
if ever through
the coldest weather
and snow yet treaded together.

Cloud Cover

Veiled Mist
Hidden Behind
Dark Droning
Curiousity
Lives
Unheard of
Shadows
Not Yet Met

Cry of a Country
For the Unrobing  
Of Its Liberty
Tears a Luxury
Still Un Wept

Get a Sling Shot
For the
Jettisoned
Handshake
Rocket ship
Of Hospitality
Quickly Now
Blood  Lives

I roll up
and lubricate my thoughts
they spiel
the sky crashes down
and the furniture is shaking now
the bed is jettisoned
the outside whispers
nonthreateningly  
a perfection forms

One man on a mattress
out there
is a utopia

It was disturbing enough
to wake me
in total darkness
And I chose then
in my kind of horror
to go to the bathroom to ***
Shaking my head
Troubled
In the wee hours
Not again
Why does this always happen to me?!
Not only is he a ghost
He’s a very old ghost
So what am I supposed to do with that?

She was dead serious
This voice in my head if you will
Earnest
‘But you don’t understand’ she explains
And I wonder where this is going?
‘He’s in love with you’

Okay?
Now what?

There’s a list somewhere
that I compiled years ago
Of questions that never had the chance
to be posed
Although approved officially by Robert
and perhaps by Bob as well
I was going to revise it
to make them even more
Impressive
Robert said that I was a genius
but to stop showing off
Questions concerning Jack,
Mass media,
The World War
in which they never fought
not for one second.
I think now
that I would like to have added
Something regarding
middle class conventions
and their subsequent
however
reluctant
disappointments
And what it must have been like
to aspire to them
In the 40s
When instead there was
Times Square and The Village
****** and Bop
Errant ****** activities
And the San Remo
Huncke suicided
by misbegotten sidewalks
And hapless blue precincts
waiting

Robert mentioned a brief car ride taken
in some Confederate State
Maybe he was in the backseat
and a joint was passed to him
He
who doesn’t indulge
if you will
Although pulmonary carcinoma
would claim him in no time at all
It was his finest moment
Sandwiched gleeful between these two
Literary
Giants
The radio not working
Now they are all dead
And I would like to think
That they are together again
encased in squeaky automotive  
Upholstery
Somewhere unearthly

Laying in bed
before sleep comes
in the new year
KNX newsradio
read the press release
Issued
It was cancer
It was terminal
There would be nothing further
and I said nothing the following morning
Staring at a wall of books and
climbing along on a rolling wooden step ladder
This isn’t even my department
The people coming through the door
were grim and silent
having bought their plane ticket to NY
To sit by his bedside
While he lay in coma
With Bessie Smith records
play softly nearby
and atmospheric
This was not a time for personal aspirations
Nor nursing the loss of a regretfully
jettisoned exchange
And although I had been warned previously
About a certain someone being
prickly
and possibly ******
and very short-tempered
and I had wondered
heretofore
how it would all go down
On the telephone
The two of us had shared a brief
‘What is he looking at?’ moment
That time here in LA
He staring at me from
a bit of a distance
on the court
And me in my chair with yet another
cigarette,
turning my head around to look behind me
to see again nothing
(God knows how many times)
Until I
An idiot
Realized that it was me that was
The subject of his eye
And I thought again
As I had done in the morning mirror
My god
My hair looks terrible

That list whereever it is
Perhaps in that laptop
That leans against my bedroom wall
Dead
on the floor
over there to my left
The one that I always pass
On my way to the john
The one that I stumble by
in the dark,
THAT list that exists
still
in my brain,
THAT I still tinker with,
THAT list exists
I would like to think
in both;
a list of questions that will always have
no answers.
To Allen
Who loves me.

Still hexed, unemployed, another daylong bout between too much silence and too much noise, I turn on the TV and watch our show. Season 4, Episode 13, "Whitecaps."

And it's the scene after the Russian mistress has called, and Carmella—played to long suffering perfection by Edie Falco—kicks Tony out of the house. The scene sticks with me, the way Carmella's body shakes, the deep grooves of her wrinkled face when she says she can't stand to be embarrassed anymore. And I'm caught off guard by two things, one simple, the other not so much. I think about how you must of related to Edie Falco out of the gate, on a surface level. You both share a prominent nose, one you were always self conscious about, but a nose you found beautiful on her face. I always wanted to ask you about it, but I never found a gentle enough phrasing. And the other thing, the complex thing, is how the whole scene runs parallel to our second break up, the bad one, the early morning fight. I remember you striking my chest over and over. I remember grabbing your wrists, trying to restrain you, and you wriggled out of my grasp only to strike your head on a cabinet. I tried to comfort you, and you wouldn't let me drive you home.

You walked. I couldn't find you. By the time I got dressed, you'd found some path unknown to me.

Gentle enough phrasing. That's why it ended one, two, three times, isn't it? My inability to be straight with you, to say how I truly felt without massaging the words to safeguard against any conflict.

I wish I could watch the show with you again. I wish it was 9:00 p.m. I wish we both had work in the morning. I wish we'd watch one episode too many with the dogs snuggling in our laps. I wish we could listen to them paw at the bedroom door as we undressed.

But we've jettisoned ourselves, haven't we? It's irreparable. I think of something you said about depression. You told me that when it was bad, really bad, you could never feel clean. I don't feel clean, no matter how much I wash. I don't feel clean, no matter the quality of deed, the grace of the statement, the preciousness of a future good memory unfolding in real time.

Riding
The color
Wheel

From
Liftoff
To splashdown

Onyx
Eyelids
Heavy with rheum

Waking to
Laminated
Stick-ons

A vinyl ocean
Of unco adhesion
And snap vacuum

Jettisoned
Trinkets
Of youth

Soaring
Prophetically
Overhead

Acquiescing
As scenes
Of upended worlds

The simple playgrounds
Both remembered
And loved

I hear
the rain
so finely

Soothing
like a chord
progression
in harmonic
-then melodic-
in a minor
key

Drops not
waiting for
permission
to fall recklessly
-jettisoned in
the wind-
to the
ground