You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the *******
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask.  The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.

They've changed all that.  Traveling
**** as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,
Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,
I roll to an anteroom where a kind man
Fists my fingers for me.  He makes me feel something precious
Is leaking from the finger-vents.  At the count of two,
Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard. . .
I don't know a thing.

For five days I lie in secret,
Tapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.
Even my best friend thinks I'm in the country.
Skin doesn't have roots, it peels away easy as paper.
When I grin, the stitches tauten.  I grow backward.  I'm twenty,
Broody and in long skirts on my first husband's sofa, my fingers
Buried in the lambswool of the dead poodle;
I hadn't a cat yet.

Now she's done for, the dewlapped lady
I watched settle, line by line, in my mirror—
Old sock-face, sagged on a darning egg.
They've trapped her in some laboratory jar.
Let her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty years,
Nodding and rocking and ******* her thin hair.
Mother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze,
Pink and smooth as a baby.

the glockenspiel of our daily raid of sewers in heaven
and our Jovian dwarves appalling the rapturous capacity of forever and ever.
the kooky jingle of our serpents, darning socks for the antichrist
and our elaborate rats. the simple maze of our condition
in the hell were at. the creaking gate to a twilight
and a lost chapter
marooned on an
island
of undead Librarians.
starving for brains
tardy with the
Harold
Robins

knife in red breast.

NAY! swear no more, thou woman whom I called
Star, Empress, Wife! Were Dian's self to lean
From her white altar and with goddess lip
Swear thee as pure as her pale breast divine,
I could not deem thee purer than I know
Thou art indeed.

Once, when my triumphs rolled
Along old Rome and blood of roses washed
The battle-stains from off my chariot-wheels,
And triumph's thunders round my legions roared,
And kings in kingly ******* golden bound
Shook at my charger's foot, past the hot din
Of Victory-whose heart of golden pride in wound
Most subtly through with fire of subtlest pain-
My soul on prouder pinion rose above
The Roman shouting, to an air more clear
Than that Jove darks with hurtling thunderbolts,
Or stains with Jovian revels-that separate sphere,
Unshared of gods or man, where thy white feet
Caught their sole staining from my ruddy heart,
Blazing beneath them; where, when Rome looked up,
'Twas with the eyes close shaded with the hand,
As at some glory terrible and pure,-
For no man being pure, a terror dwells
Holy and awful in a sinless thing-
And Caesar's wife, the Empress-Matron, sat
Above a doubt-as high above a stain.

Nay! how know I what hell first belched abroad
Tall flames and slanderous vomitings of smoke,
Blown by infernal breathings, till they scaled
Thy throne of whiteness, and the very slaves
Who crouched in Roman kennels wagged the tongue
Against the wife of Caesar: 'Ha! we need not now
And opal-shaded stone wherewith to view
A stainless glory.' In that day my neck
Was bound and yoked with my twin-Caesar's yoke-
Man's master, Sorrow.

I know thee pure-
But Caesar's wife must throne herself so high
Upon the hills that touch their snowy crests
So close on Heaven that no slanderous Hell
Can dash its lava up their swelling sides.
I love thee, woman, know thee pure, but thou
No more art wife of Caesar. Get thee hence!
My heart is hardened as a lonely crag,
Grey granite lifted to a greyer sky,
And where against its solitary crown
Eternal thunders bellow.

he brought me the moon
when all I wanted
were saturn’s rings
wrapped around my fingers

It has every right to bare
this clenched fist of a grudge
embittered by techno-Jovian
whims and base transformations

Once delicately formed— two
tips pressed en pointe, three
others elegantly tucked— it
danced with a golden shaft
pulling indigo pirouettes
across a swept ivory stage

Then came the re-pose: a claw’s
arched looming. Unhappiness
fell as five wilted stems,
beggar mouths forced to fumble
toward those impoverished
humps of white-on-black glyph

The other hand is left
complimentary, richly gripped
by understudy glee, being

on this cloudless night
pushing through the Pittsburgh haze,
daring to present themselves,
entwined in cosmic tango, are
Jupiter and the Moon.
the bands play across a
diluted Jovian face. while the storm
    rages on
the lunar rocks and craters,
perfectly visible imperfections,
cast petulant shadows -
reminding me that
from destruction one can
   still find beauty.

Let me write my books of poetry,
Sing into a microphone with no connection.
Let me wash my hair in the rain
As a means to get myself dry,
To find a connection;

To cleanse my skin with ancient water
That tiptoed the forest before Man.
Let me punch the code of my identity
Into the melody and not the spreadsheet.
Allow me to **** all the people

I was before I felt alive.
Old means for yesterdays,
Ends that caused me
To start over again.

Let me send letters to New England,
Let me drink coffee on the pedestal
Of a day spent sober-
Buckle of the grass in the wind,
Mind lost to cloud canopies
And transparent heartbeats.

Let me kiss a foreign tongue
To learn that all lies taste the same.
Let me take off my clothes
When I am alone, simply to remember
That I can.

Moon: a companion,
Windowsill vigils at dawn,
Medication for the side effect
Caused by the cure.

Let me wash up in the Jovian seas
When my feet are rooted to the Earth.
Let my mind pester the working day
With dreams for tomorrow,
With catastrophes blacklisted in the sky.

Let me write my books of poetry,
Songs of sadness with no tune.
All the feelings I forgot,
All the passion I outgrew.

at the desk,
a Cytherean lover,
with tobacco stains on his
fingertips —

his affinity for
parchment paper
soaked in bergamot
and sandalwood
left me alone
with the cosmos.

on an eclipse,
a cigar graced his lips…
my favorite trick was
the halos he blew around
the moon.

the constellations were
yellowing notes
by antique tapers
(“years and years,” the
telescope hums),
and the Scientist paints me
another Jovian lullaby.
coffee lives in Starry Night
because of him...

That familiar redolence
as I browse the bookshelf.

Saurian Jovian's and Martian's clasp me to catastrophe rubble,
Dusty airpocket's, with blue sky bubble's, I tryeth to reacheth. Whilst their hobnail's art click cackling, mine suffocation is intensified by magnitude; longitude and latitude, distance is cleverly missing, mine red flow rushes, mine heartbeat nudge's; Harmonious harp playing angelic one, Gale's her hail assail into the impenetrable. She's Immortal and invincible; on forearm's, nose to her garb, her bouquet fragrance I canst telleth a lie; got me broiling in mammal wild primal heat.......



©Brandon nagley
©Lonesome poet's poetry
©Earl Jane dedication

What is left to discover
beneath these primitive pages,
this idealistic sprawl
of half-rhymes and phrases?

We have scaled the mountains
and cast superstition asunder,
we have walked on the moon
and we have learned from our blunder.

For, what can I do
to be the first ****** eyes,
upon an uncharted land,
under Jovian skies?

We have fathomed existence
to the nearest iota,
we have established society
and a deep bass of culture.

All that is left is to wait for a saviour.
A new unbelievable mind
to help us in knowing,
to give us back to the stars,
which are forever a-glowing.

All that is left is to understand,
that where we are living
is just borrowed land.

time flows slowest
around galactic centers and our worst moments
black holes and dying parents
foul, putrid and humid in
acts of betrayal and cowardice
pooling around loss like van gogh’s whorly stars snickering
voyeuristic time crept in at my point of least courage
subatomic tabloid photographers flashbulbs cracking
when I broke your heart one january afternoon
and there was enough time gathered for me
to store all the details of the scene
the way your shoulders slumped and the
straps of your tank top slid a little to the sides
how you looked up and to the left hoping the oak tree out the window
would grow a mouth and explain my sudden departure
if only you could see it through tears coalescing
like soap bubbles summoned between thumb and forefinger in childhood baths
“I promised myself I wouldn’t cry,” you said
and it took me years of vanity to understand you’d known;
my accumulated guilt and sadness had not been subtle

i named my sin at an awkward dinner out
millennia after a stellar collapse in a one bedroom apartment
where I lied and told you it was me
not you but it was you
still burn inside me cold
when I’m alone
warm on days I know I saved our children
from the sad gravity of loveless parents
silently begging of them greatness
to validate a vacuum-empty marriage born of
supposed-to and should in the absence
of desire or at least the resignation
of married friends or Jovian planets unignited

maybe time cups our worst memories before us
in greedy luminescent starflesh hands woven of personal apocalypses
laughing outright when the memory burns away
in solar flare fingers
warps in the distorted fabric of how
we edit and redact those moments to survive sane
and we panic realizing
after breaking or being broken
we have remade ourselves entirely of
shame and misery and misfit parts
devoid of structure beyond weeping
brittle bones of future selves
stolen or relinquished  

or maybe time holds these memories for us immature
baby skull soft
too delicate to be picked through with angry desperate hands
while distance and growth or
maybe just forced perspective
lets the memory or
us harden into something we can pluck
from its hands lifetimes later and lazily
browse like any other casual catastrophe

My dearest reader, seconds ago, before your
Decision to turn the page, there was nothing.

These very words were hidden away and thus
Unseen, to all intents did not exist:
Just like the beauty of the Jovian Moons
'Til “Voyager” beamed those pictures back to Earth.

For you have brought this page to life - yes you and only you!
You bring along a wealth of memories of your own,
Your feelings, thoughts, regrets and sorrows, joys
And fears, your hopes and fantasies.

You have the mountains of your mind:
Your personal rivers, clouds and suns: flowers and gasometers!
Landscapes, dreams and nightmares of your very own.
And me, as you sit reading this, I might be dead and buried,
Or with you right now, or maybe miles away.

To you I give the role of God: to breathe your life upon this page.
Take you away, dear reader, and there’s nothing: formless void.
Yet now, together, you may join me, in a realm
Where Life, though challenged by evil,
Is warded by our Love.

Paul Butters

(C) PB 1997.

My words through technology,
Are of no comparison to what I can say,
And do in person,
For showing my love.

But I can still have them be a close second.
It’s really all so crazy.
It’s an endless amount of magic,
That I can’t bring myself forth to realize.

It’s miraculous and wondrous.
You. You are the center of my universe.
You're my sun, my moon, my stars, my galaxy.
My Jovian-Plutonien Gravitational effect.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.
You’re mine. All mine.
I won’t let anyone else have you,
As long as I’m with you.

Me. I’m me. Taking it all in,
Enjoying every little bit of it.
Every Time you inch closer,
To me at the lunch tables.

Every time we both enter our little world,
And no one else is there but us.
Every time we hold hands.
Every smile we pass to each other.

Every time you look at me with,
adoring eyes.
I cherish those moments.

Every moment that I know you’re all mine,
I cherish that. I love you so much,
it’s an unbreakable bond in my heart now.


The worst of things could try to break it,
And yet it would still prevail.
The reason why I’ve stayed is simple:
Even if you break my heart,
You’re the reason why it heals.

Us. We are unique together.
I’ve never had a relationship like this,
And I want to continue having a relationship like this,
Who wouldn’t.

It’s amazing just how much I love you,
And am devoted to us.
The definition of love is to feel a deep,
Romantic attachment to someone.

I have not been clingy in my past,
I don’t think, but in this one,
I can say I am. So the word attachment,
Suits me well.

I think the world of you.
I don’t care if the world is composed,
of billions of people.
I want you. I love you.

End of story,
And beginning of our’s.

From the day i was generated by the incandescent dust of the universe,
you've always been the stellar form of my kind.

We endured abrupt phenomena,
So close to colliding into one galaxy like the milky way and andromeda.
It might cost us 4 more billion years,
but travelling through different loops of time with you makes it seem so near.

And though the knowledge of the vast galaxy is one I might perfect,
you have always been my Jovian Plutonian Gravitational Effect.

A phenomenon for when Jupiter and Pluto align,
therefore diminishing gravity allowing us to float,
that is how I describe our love so divine,
I hope you understand what I am trying to connote.

We formed new radiant stars as our gas clouds and dusts interact,
pulling us into new shapes ravishing and abstract.

It was our secret that we steathily compacted with pure devotion,
as we expand by merging with multiple of galaxies in motion.

You shone brightly
You were even quite sprightly
Were you the sun
In my own little galaxy?

Or the black hole
that light can't even escape from,
where everything feels heavy,
but all is empty?

Then suddenly i looked at you and you were just a star,
i studied you from afar.
I felt like you were a black hole trying to hold me back.
It felt like one of my planets were being attacked.

Being attacked by you,
And when I looked at you again,
it felt like we didn't even know each other,
not even as a friend.

It felt like a cosmic year,
the time seemed to slow down.
You became my only fear,
on where i seemed to drown.

But i realized that this galactic year was meant for me,
it was meant for you too.
It was my solar system's journey to the center of you.

Every star that i looked upon brought me back to where you came from,
and i am blessed to be a part of your history.
I took the time to admire the different shades of you, pink, blue, and plum.
Til' i discovered that what i felt for you was no longer a theory.

I fell in love with you even more,
your face more beautiful than any other of the universe's shore.
I watched you breathing beside me,
and I said, being without you was a horrible fantasy.

I appreciate your galaxy even more,
you waited for me to understand,
I studied each and every detail of your planet's core,
now when I'm with you, I feel grand.

I will be the atmosphere to compress the air of meteors to avoid them from destroying you, from destroying us.
No asteroids will ever be solid enough to demolish this trust.

I will orbit around your zone and keep you safe as much as I can,
I will value you for the rest of my existance and even longer than the earth's lifespan.

For you are more beautiful than the morning star,
your wisdom is brighter than sirius.
Your smile brings me life more than the earth could ever give,
Your presence makes me weak and delirious.

You gave me enough time to revise your pieces,
and for that i am thankful.
Forever we will wander around the universe,
as our love gets more stronger and powerful.

What we have is something that not even the smartest species could ever find,
but all I know is that since the day i was generated by the incandescent dust of the universe,
you've always been the stellar form of my kind.

;

Words by Illicit & Bandit.

Way back in the dark ages
this might be coming from

Cleveland
these words that can

only be said on a piece
of cardstock

but they come courtesy
of a fiery Jovian afternoon

my remarks are very brief

even though the future
was not all that it was

cracked up to be
there is someone up here
in space

that still loves you

could we try again

Whit Howland © 2020