My visit to Jurassic Park
What a shock

And my how those fences spark

And be careful
Of those prehistoric sharks

If you go wading in the sea
Don't expect to live past 3

And raptors roam
Across the forest floor

I wonder what else the park
Has in store?

Brachiosaurus eating leafs
From a tree

What a beautiful creature
It seems to be!

But stay away
From those long legs

They can stomp you into
The ground
Like little pegs

Well I enjoyed my trip
To Jurassic Park

I did not dare go out
In the dark

I stayed in
The park's Atomic shelter

Better than running around
That park helter-skelter

Better safe than sorry I always say
I left that park
And lived to see another day

Be on the side of truth, speak boldly what’s true
Said the father to his son, truth you must value.
One day said the father, son let’s go to a movie
Jurassic Park at the Globe would be fun and groovy.
A little recreation is overdue son, what do you say
No harm will be done, if you are off from school a day.
The lad a little trepid said after a reflecting pause
What dad should I tell the teacher as absence’s cause!
Don’t worry son tell him the truth for from the daily grind
A day’s break of a little boy he wouldn’t surely mind.
So they merrily enjoyed the day, the movie was ****** good
Away from lessons and classroom, found the kid in fabulous mood.
But you know about the good times, it’s in them to always rush
The merry day passed quickly, and the boy was back in class.
What happened yesterday, the teacher’s jaws hardened
The boy had to admit it, with truth he was burdened.
I had gone with my father to watch the Jurassic Park
Was enough for the teacher to show his anger’s spark.
You boy bunked class and now tell it on my face
Get out right now and remain standing till recess.
In the class was another boy without truth placed better
He too like our lad had gone to the Globe theatre
When the teacher turned to him asked him what’s his cause
He said he was down with fever without a moment’s pause.
The truthful boy felt pangs of remorse for saying what was true
From that day he learned the lesson that truth would never do.

. 'as for those poets, only the perverse follow them. do you not see that they go too far in every direction and say things, which they cannot do?' (ash-shu'ara / the poets 26:224-226).

call them what you like,
the Huguenots,
for all i care...

   you always side with
the "heretics"...
  
   given that, "said" heretics
retain some cultural value
relativism of other cultures,
namely in the form of
depiction -

    since why would, "the word"
be deemed holy,
    ****-naked,
                rather than donning
a bikini of "iconoclasm"...
         when words... are at
the meat-market of copyright -
what with © coca cola?

                 sunni islam would have
never allowed sufism...
  but Farsi does...
  and will continue...
since no Iranian will bow
before an Arab within the schematics
of history...

          Sunni Islam, it's Wahhabi sentimentality...
so why persist in signing
the Adhan?
   why not speak in a honing like
drone sentiment of plain speech?
i thought all music was banned?
the current Adhan is a form
of music... isn't it? BAN IT!

    you never side with these Sunni
muslims, exploiting Bangladeshi labor,
you side with the heretics of Iran...
these *******, i can at least respect...
  
      no fast cars, convenient ongoing
cultural insurrections -
   Sufism...
       Afghan women's poetry,
and all that much closer to Hindu mysticism...
    
yeah... "islamophobia":
but only against Sunni Islam...
   but Shia Islam?
   no problem...
   i could stomach these peoples
like i could stomach the in-between
of the Turkish variant -
no ideology - simply, pure, power throttle...

i could make a great Janissary -
with a Turkish barber...
         for a great trim of hair and beard...
i'd cast a shadow on some
obscure chocolatier of Brussels
who thinks himself a politician...

     but there are certain aspect of Islam
i am willing to tolerate...
   what happened to the son in law
of Muhammad, namely, Ali...
was raw ******* kicking...

               promises, promises...
no promises...
           Shia Islam, as an European,
i can tolerate, Turkish Islam, i can tolerate...
Turkey is incrementally shy
of being treated at the 2nd variant of Iran...
at least with Iran, we share a history
via the insurrection into the ancient
texts through Greece...

  come to think of it...
whenever i listen to
matta's song echo babylon...
i start feeding myself goosebumps,
reminding myself
of Cyrus... Nebuchadnezzar...
and the dim-wit that was
   Belshazzar...

always siding with the heretics...
if not on economic groundwork,
then at least motivating,
rather than monetizing an idea...

and the Shia muslims are...
    one way or another...
   unlike the gluttons of Dubai...
the barbie dolls of postage stamp
"proof" of progress,
in size, and worth...

   Sunni Islam would have
never allowed poetics to remain
a viable form of expression -
the Persian tradition that is,
far beyond the western concern
for a comment section...

         Shia Islam allows patronage
of the arts, notably poetry,
without concern for monetary
funding, it, at least, doesn't prohibit it...
given the pride of the Persians...
Sunnis and their continual quest
for finding water...
    sure... poetry is pointless within
such restrictions of
existential concerns...
    but... given the current, civilized
establishment?
   sky-scrapers in *******
sand dunes?

         the qu'ran should have
forbidden the architectural ambitions
equivalent to the tower of babel
being erected, in environments,
that could never sustain said projects...

    and who originally spewed the term
islamophobia?
Sunni Islam...
        i never liked this strand of belief...
i hate the Sunnis like
a Shia partisan...

p.s. it's called patriotism is America...
but nationalism in Europe...
    you sure that's not a synonym?
Europeans can't be patriotic,
and Americans are never nationalistic?

...

   well: how could i ever convert to islam,
i do enjoy the adhan from time to time,
"sorry", but i do...
  i can't help it:
if i'm a sucker for pop songs,
i'm also a sucker for the adhan...
   crusader songs, templar songs become
stuffy after a while...
and last time i checked:
     there were the northern crusades
against the baltic people:
notably prussians, lithuanians...
with that cushion of: mediating the
escalation of war by the polacks...
coming from the east:
  last time i checked the mongols
didn't reach leipzig...
               buffer zone people...
and what of the ottoman onsalught
of vienna 1529: the ****** winged hussars
won the charge...

so, coming back to heidegger... aphorism 26
ponderings IX... how am i to not be
the historical animal?
         perhaps in german, in germany
i might become a non-historical animal,
to begin: anew, but with a terrible
past to hide, to negate...
   i could do that: if i were a german,
speaking german, in germany...
but i'm in england:
            i might have some roots in
Silesia, but it's "hard" to not be a historical
animal, an "animal" with a sense of time,
i.e. a future a past a present...
esp. under the english conditions
of: the biological animal momentum narrative,
like a tsunami, like an earthquake...
ripples throughout...
              i can't move forward with
the english championing darwinism every
single ******* step of the way...
why can't they hide darwin like the polacks
hid copernicus...
given the motto: copernicus -
who moved the earth, and stopped the sun...
why wouldn't i escape into history
if the current biological reality is:
(a) a yawn... the cruel nature of per se?
   the courting of pigeons on a t.v. antenna...
pigeons get rejected all the time,
lesson learned, he bows and bows,
coos... expands his tail feathers upon
the bow then folds them... she flies away...
repeat...
    (b) i can't escape being a historical
animal in the way that what the current
facts are being repeated have encountered
a whiff of Chernobyll...
              history is inclided to answer reality...
biology? not so much... not from what i've
seen and heard...
             truly a schizophrenics disney dream:
to walk among the newly insane feeling
like the only sane among them...
beau-ti-ful!
                   well... given the current criteria
of being bilingual as being synonymous
with being a schizophrenic...
           magic!
                    
   now the crescendo...aphorism 24
ponderings X:

              the word designates, the word signifies,
the word says, the word is (heidegger)...

i found that you can only write
"philosophy" with a neat, fixed vocab. regime,
clarity of boundaries...
    quadratic events in vocab.:

i.e. the reflexive: yourself, himself, itself etc.
and the reflective: your, self....
                       his, self...
                                  it, and the self...
                    ergo? atheistic scissors,
  the two articles, indefinite and definite
                                 a / the "self"...

i'm not playing "identity politics",
when i say that only two peoples ever managed
to sack Moscau... the mongols and the polacks
with the help of lithuanians,
"identity politics" only happens in
post-colonial society, akin to the english,
i'll speak the english,
but i will not be a cucked indian of
the former raj: i will eat the fish & chips,
i will eat the sunday roast,
   i will eat the english breakfast with great
delight...
            but i will not do what these former
colonial masters expect of me:
integrate at the expense of making my
mutterzunge into hubris!
stubborness contra pride...
                hard to tell the difference...

and why do i like heidegger so much?
i'm not into the ad homine arguments...
my grandfather, was, a communist party member...
so?
       i like heidegger... because he appreciates
poetics, i like that poets can share the same
values as philosophers,
thanks to heidegger: we have been requested
back into the republic...
if plato and islam didn't like us, hanging around,
some offshoot german thinker / promenade
enthusiast like used enough to,
i suppose: ban the theatre puppeteers...

i am not playing identity politics...
biological reality is not enough...
but archeological reality?
       can you really advance to counter?
i was born near:
Krzemionki Opatowskie, a Neolithic and
early Bronze Age complex of flint mines
for the extraction of Upper Jurassic (Oxfordian)
banded flints...
  personally? i don't believe in
the African genesis conundrum...
i believe "my" people originated from
the Indian sub-continent,
as, associated with the complex:
Indo-European categorization of language;
i'm still to see an African phonetic
encoding system, beside the hieroglyphics...

i, was, born, there! i'm not a displaced
post-colonial debacle between former master
and former slave...
i have: roots... i'm not ******* up to the fish & chips
brigade with a friday night's worth of curry...
i cook my own curry,
and by god: it is the food of the gods...
i'll give the blue indians that counter...
but sure as **** not the worth of mead
or whiskey...

if they only tolerated themselves,
sure, learn the english language,
but know this much:
           english is the modern lingua franca...
it's the language of economics,
forget the natives, too ignorant to learn
either deutsche or française:
island-folk...
                what else, what other attitude?
even the russians are like:
that land of the weirdos? the idiosyncratics?
yes, we know that land...
the only "thing" that shelters the english
are the h'americans, the south africans,
the australians etc.,
  sure as **** the scots aren't sheltering them...
and, mind you?
   if the i.r.a. really wanted to plant
a bomb?
   a real bomb? they'd revert from speaking
any english to begin with... resorting
to revising their usage of gàidhlig:
ga-id-hlig... gaelic...
   like the welsh, stubborn people, proud people,
retaining their Çymraeg...
celt: said kelt...
the glaswegian football team?
       Çeltic... not: keltic...
  borrowed from the greek: sigma (ς: cedilla to ****)...
   wow! all the particulars in the english tongue!
guess it would take an ausländer to spot them!

U-21 european championships,
england versus romania:
                           a magnificent match...
the youngsters playing better football
than the oldies in their mid to late / early 30s...

i'm trying to tolerate Islam,
               it's not in my nature...
            hell... i enjoyed visiting a turkish barber
shop, i still have an unflinching opinion that,
the turks are the best barbers in the world...
but...

              this quote, is going to **** you:
same aphorism / pondering (24 / X) -


*** fight videos - count dankula...
you know what i'd love to do to these little
snarky *****?
the french revolution isn't enough...
n'ah, them hanging, is not enough....
ever heard of the butchers' hook?
                 it's also callled close-up fishing...
imitation hang-man...
   you insert a fishing hook...
and you let the sweeney todd ****** dangle...
on a hook, rather than a noose...
lords of salem come your way?
i'd rather the snarky teen hanging off
a fisherman's hook than dangle
like some lynched ******...
beside the suffocation,
i'd like them with a fisherman's hook entombed
in their hard palette...
         i don't want them hanging...
what am i? a sadist?
  i want them on the fisherman's hook!
when suffocating without a broken spine absorbed
by the neck isn't enough!
  fisherman's hook gallows is a
masterpiece... of suffering...
  most certain...
  when cheap comedy is being towed...
making fun of bums, or homeless people...
the current society is so welcome
to bypass all the "adventures" of Loki...
but akin to the lords of Salem...
burn!? such a limitated imagination!

ah... right... digressing...
        the reflexive / reflective quadratic...
language - only if speech  has acquired
the highest univocity of the word does it
become strong (enough) for the hidden
              play of its essential multivocity
(as withdrawn from all "logic"),
             of which poets and thinkers alone
are capable, in their own respective modes
and their own directions of sovreignty.

we do live in a time of a lost sense
of dialectic, since we do not live in a time
of etertaining dialogue,
perfectly sensible opinions,
that's all we have...

                       if one of these snarky *******
came up to me...
they'd get a chance to experience a rubric
of 4, knuckles...
what's 189 centimeters in empirical?
6ft2...      oh!
                   see where imagination takes you?
and here i was: thinking i was without it!
butcher's hangman...
oh, not so easy...
                  
                fame by no association to fame...
just the tears of parents who raised their children
to be nothing more than rugrats...
annoying gnat like bothersomes;
and nothing quiet special to be associated
with weimar berlin...
     just, these,
   h'american mall onlookers
with pwetty-guy-for-a-white-fly-mentality,
as borrowed from californian
1990s punk;

re-used ****** losers.

mad-hatter's fraction: 10/6....
      0.666...
      well: to the given extent:
1.666666(7)....
     1, 0, /6,
no number is divisible by 0,
every number, divisible by 1:
is the same number...
    mad hatter's 10/6...

   re-used ****** losers...
i like that phrase...
        7 for every 6, 7 for every 6...
until the 0. fraction comes
a 1.: exponential serf of 0...
0 being the multiplier...
          
         i really am growing a beard to less
don it, but rather to experience
a relief from patience...
war robots?
the first non n.p.c. game...
i like that, very much...
      and when i did:

you know my first experience of
love at first sight?
the younger sister of my then girlfriend...
****** up ****...

love at first sight is a terrible phenomenon...
i was nearing 18, she was barely 13...
i was dating her older sister...
but it was love at first sight,
the trouble with: love at first sight:
it doesn't lie...
it tries to lie...
          but it can't lie...

   paedophilia? a bit... untouched bodies
though... bodies of people who were
never supposed to touch...
i once said to a fwend:
well wouldn't it be ****** up if i touched
her?
   she's a muse, which doesn't translate
into vacating her as a busy body
worth of a touch, does it?
     if only my old friend samuel said
otherwise:
sylvester "contra" tweety:
my first girlfriend...
but her sister?
         i was nearing 18, she was about 13...
love at first sight...
untouched, cradled, unscathed...
and so she remained...
   until she did what every girl would
have done...thank god she remained
a figment of my imagination...
   rammstein: rosernrot...
    
           i have seen love at first...
such a load of ******* that it had to be
the younger sister of a girl i was dating...
and the **** that i had to be 18 and see
was just beginning her teenage transition...
the world unfair i grant
the most justifications... as being
the (just - unnecessary adjective) arbiter...

love at first sight becomes a forbidden love...
love at first sight was always a forbidden
love...
           and the sort of "love" that achieves
a perspctive of change that doesn't
translate into old age...
love at first sight is soon translated
into a love of affairs closely associated
with middle-age disenfranchised
state of affairs...
i.e. to love again...
            how else to feel relief from
having lost both one's inhibitions
               as well as one's ambitions?!
in the conundrum of the mortal
"question" of the continuum being
preserved?

Nothing these days is truly failsafe.
You buy some Ultrathins and the babies might win,
even the Trojan horse had issues for the boys of Troy.
Fancy ribbed models can end up in shreds
& I've seen the reservoir tips burst.
But if you're still ***** & thirst for safe ***,
you should try different combinations
of tubed-latex along with 'the pill'
dispensed from
the fancy circular monthly-packages.
That's your best bet,
your best chance of survival.
If anything, don't be a dinosaur
thinking your living Jurassic,
this is about being prophylactic
'cause nobody knows
what killed those ornery
unprotected beasts.
The experts believe,
it was probably
a rare disease
that got 'em.

how  weird    that   i  could
miss  something  as simple
as   your   odd    habit     of
saying "zoom zoom zoom"
any time you're  in motion

omnipresent sick to my ******* stomach

dressed in mosquitoes that are woolen
like the lining of my english ******* and
coated in a complex mixture of secreted proteins
i follow the screen of the teleprompter as it storms,
blue and brilliant behind a mess of optical wiring.

lip and teeth
theres bile at the base of my throat
threatening to bust with each greased second
as my brain becomes nauseated by the snow-drift
of sentences burning the back of my eyelids.
i've never believed the things i read
so now i'm mute but spitting, spiteful and unoriginal
visualizing their greyhound decapitations in high colour.
nearly implying transit to our friendship or something
that would only churn the stomach like rich food after famine

so yes, i am the cruelest female of august
shipwrecked on the front porch with the lamplight raining in my mind
and i'm asking the moon as it rises like a solemn word
why i'm sick all the time, sweating
from everywhere but my tear ducts and
waiting for several breeds of cold to attack my corpse

I L U like my ***** clothes
Love being forgotten
On my bedroom floor

I L U like chores love the
music that helps them
forget they're chores

I L U like ***** dishes
Love hot showers and
the other side of the sink

I L U like I love spilling
Salt, and warding off the evil,
By tossing some behind my back

I L U like I love
Breaking rules about
my own supposed
non-Superstition

I L U like black cats love
Bad luck, cause to them,
It's just Friday, you know?

I L U like the hot dog bun
Loves staring at the beef patty,
Wishing "if only, if only"

I L U like bread loves
Being forgotten till we're really hungry
And then we're all ungrateful, like
"Hey bread, you remember us?"
And bread is high above us, like
"Always."
Not even a hint of scorn

I L U like the first time I saw
Jurassic Park, The dinosaurs
Were real enough
sans chicken feathers, and
Who needs modern science anyways
when love has no fossil records?

I L U like the weather loves
Surprise parties.
I L U like painful
surprise party memories love
being forgotten on my bedroom floor

I love you like Mayflies love living,
oh so briefly, once a day, every single day,
Chapter one to chapter none

I love you like mayflies love themselves,
brevity and all, stirred by nothing but
the glow of Dawn's light,
Dead by dusk, the Mayfly never
knows its final form.
It dies
in complete
incompletion,
but that's okay.

It drank the salt ocean,
it breathed the living air,
And that's how I want to L U

I'd like to think I'm a hopeless romantic,
but honestly if I had a time machine
I wouldn't go back to you and me.

**Dinosaurs.

Joseph sits on skinny chairs, reads the funnies
she would be tall, pretty hair, she don’t see
see he won’t be reading one bit, he looks dumb
just staring, looking fat, broken, glum
she cleans up all the plates

—Put those dishes down, now is a time for love-making
I’ll take you now, and wonder if I’ve taken
steps enough to excuse my idleness; in time
you’ll leave, and supine, I’ll take a coat of lyme
and let the lines loose

We will communicate through touch and kiss
and enjoy the full of it, pull in the harvest;
light and movies romance the **** out of me
at last, we are at the end of all things irony
Christ that **** impersonal.

—This music don’t be coming from them
that is right, that is absolutely the end of them
they just end, I don’t care, I let it be
how come you so foolish, Joseph? I don’t see
why are you so foolish?

—You play the guitar by ear and plucking
at this moment they are dinosaur hunting
time is absurd and disgusting
I don’t understand it, I’m simply saying
you played some songs I knew at the time

But how different are your songs from mine
attach your seatbelts to your right hand buckles, fine
away with it, away with them all, please
I am telling, telling, understand, please
different in a few ways, love

—Joseph, you play the drums too loud
you are a big, dumb, idiot head
they end, it certainly has to be
it’s apocalyptic, something like this, said she
such a dummy you Joseph

the movie drums its so vicious loud
the end a dumb idiot head
that’s a thing she might have said at the time
and you are given a full witness to the violence of our time
Joseph plays bad harmonica.

We could have gone to lunch today,
We could have talked a while.
You could have explained the pain away.
And I could have made you smile,
because it would all be alright.

You should have come to see me
I would have made things right.
Could have, should have, would have,
So close and yet so far.
Now we're both alone tonight...

*But I have your guitar.

given but only two algorithms of time, or trigonometric said in chemistry, vectors: para-, meta-, and ortho-, i'd be bored with merely mind two assertions of a beginning, one with that in this atmosphere, and one with all possible atmospheres... and a third missing? that wouldn't do! i'd need a third algorithm, to fluctuate between the atomic and the fully formed, clearly historical, ideally biased on humanism to the point of being scientifically fictional, or, to put it mildly, a Welshman in the Jurassic Period; forgetful about Freud's necessity of having allocated dreams a complexity of language necessarily worth deciphering: i want to know why the Welsh invested their lack of unconscious-imagination's (dreams) worth of the couch to digest dragons, as a much dated predisposition to unearth dinosaur skeletons, and feel absolutely no revealing remnant of collecting a people to the assimilated tongue, yet upon discovery disperse them, and abhor the nativity of the said tongue as futile when given the agility of a colonising tongue.*

what the difference between only my entombed heart
knows the difference to, write a poem as personal as this
one enables me to write one in the φarmacy (φ + θ = F...
nein veto) - politicians have lost the art of ρetoric - they simply
lost it... it's a sunken ship they try to revive while mending the sails...
we keep the Indian Summers and my hope that the
(a double definite, paradoxically accurate
given this) turnip fade-away
red becomes godly ivory when her cinnamon
choc auburn pleases her heart,
just then it might please, and i might
redeem myself, away from the Irish pub
and the aunts knitting a wedlock of
salient harmony for the churchyard
where the Sunday's best made the most
impression with the forthcoming grave
of a Kubrick marriage: redeemed with wearing
masks, later a damnation, of worn
lied attention, performed for a social status excuse:
x ambassadors: mainly Jews...
rage against the machine: mainly Black
converts to Islam...
where's the energy, with a skateboard of:
white cool everyone's happy,
or with: i'm angry... i'm angry...
                              martin Luther King was a renegade
without a hippy skateboard....
                       so it sold a million of toothbrushes
and a million fluoride attaches of rot...
cos the buck was necessary for the pristine example
of the founding father: Abram Lincoln -
got the appropriate shave, never got the congress
to suggest the kiss was a (fl)oral excuse for oral ***
upon the f.g.m. Eden minded when Egyptian
contra was suggested - yes, also called fluoride -
or Fl... then oral...  so the Frappuccino
and later the khaki chinos,
or ambrosia Mussolini and the 5 p.m. tea
catch phrase, so it just felt like dodging a meteorite
so the people could yawn when watching a movie
about Dinosaurs... or like i said:
just before earth was inhabitable, Mars was wheezing...
just before Earth gave us the sterile environment of
having landlords we had the masters of Mars...
they lived there, when Earth was inhabitable we had
Martians... compared to Earth Mars became the second moon...
but prior to the hospitable nature of earth
acquiring us, Mars was just as habitable...
this is the point where we acknowledge common sense
of the Chinese and the Welsh prescribing us Dinosaurs with
Dragons when digging up fossils and carbon dating....
this is where N.A.S.A. says... **** me... we just invested in *******...
between Darwinism and the microbe and a lot of blanks...
and the big bang... the best intermediate solution we
have is to say: before earth became habitable Mars was the first
project of divinity's expressing competence with failure
and revision.... when Mars was habitable
the sun was much smaller and much warmer...
this is the third route to seek origins,
you have route 1: from monkey came the rational man,
or the **** quasi sapiens... later the
**** deus pseudo sapiens...
2. the big bang and on the basis of nouns:
a real ****** way to say genesis...
or... 3. prior to earth Mars was the prime concern
of divine ingenuity...
through the times Mars became less volcanic and more Saharan,
just like earth at the beginning...
i mean Mars was the first earth... hence we inherited the
warring archetype...
or like philosophers: standing outside all of time and space
and a toilet blockage of imagination...
we're waiting for the third version... Venus turning
into earth... forget the monkey and man...
i itemise the sphere of the sun third time lucky...
as faked war we inherited, so too the fake love of those
to inherit our blunder... and thus the combination
of what's to be said in the first place, or anything at all...
Venusian love of the purified mammalian leveraging
simpleton onomatopoeia knock-knock... who's there?
woof! this is the alternative third route...
the one establishes us in the dynamical face of monkey
gene disparity economic, i.e. so similar... yet so different...
the other the big bang.. and then the third...
before earth became habitable, Mars was the suggested
preference... well, with the two obscene time-scales
this third alternative is in no way equally obscene.

Crying over stupid things
Filling your mouth with chocolate everythings
Upset over the simplest things, you want to just scream  
These feelings come and go, or stay a few days
Everything has to be cleaned or organized just right or I'll go ****** girl
Wearing simple things and hiding in your room for days, sad or depressed
Being filled with water like a balloon, feeling sleepy and like you can't do anything
Opening your eyes to see it's today, it's no valentines day
Same feelings, same amys, different month
Pen or paper? Awkward or uncomfortable?

play wild things
lie is waking
spirit is american
the book is beat
where is wonderland, Alice?
Jurassic period dinosaurs,
oven toasted humans,
plastic skeletons,
dancing to ska,
cupboards organize themselves,
toking indian hides
blaring chocolate chip trumpet solo
as the laughing sun, rises
pen stroke sun rays
into a rainbow bouquet

A prose poem*

It’s all boarded up now, abandoned in the triangle of downtown Roy, New Mexico, but like a lost island named Capronea two-hundred forgotten years ago, I find myself back in the summer of 1977, seven-years old in the balcony of a second-run, small town movie house watching *The Land That Time Forgot in that small-town, movie-timeline kind of way: two years after everyone else. Popcorn brides, my cousins and I walked the movie processional during opening credits, almost missing the proverbial plummeting message thrown out to sea in a water cask. Candy-bored through all the world-war-submarine scenes, I perked up with innocent horror at the spreading circle of blood in the river, rifles shooting into a gaping dinosaur mouth. And the thunk of its neck hitting the deck. Years later I come back to the epic on classic TV. This time I notice the wobbly love story, German metaphysics arguing with British empiricism that lasts only one flirty scene. Now I’m shocked and a little dismayed over how little screen time the dinosaurs actually get, their three Shakespearean scenes, how I still feel all the same heartache as they enact their long and dramatic death throes. Doug McClure is alright, I guess, except that his hair is always blown out to an impossible feathered confection, just like the German Captain who keeps his hat on way past when this is necessary or useful. We laugh with ironic smugness at the stiff Jurassic puppets and the blood on rubber, the convolution of the island’s evolutionary biology. Those river amoebas are a hoot! Oh, the ironic wink that double-crosses itself in the end, an irony that is really homesickness longing for sincerity, simplicity. My husband says he prefers this movie to those Spielberg ones. I give him hell about this but later come around to see his point. Let’s take the movie’s basic premise: we are at the end of history presumably. So even if we could forget all that history, wipe the slate clean as it were, we still wouldn’t get along with our rivals. At least not enough to fashion an oil refinery from sticks and stones, pack up all that oil in barrels, and roll on outa this nightmare.

None of us will get off this island alive. At the end we’re left crossing a mountain of ice with two people whose only hope is to simplify things down to survival and ***—and *** in those impossible furs no less (in dinosaur leather maybe). We can’t help but trip over the metaphors here. They're everywhere. Only back in 1977, we believed them.

I understand they find dinosaur bones there in your backyard. Big ones. I've never been to your house or even close to that neighborhood, but ever since you've written me, I am completely intrigued. What you said about me, I think about you in an execrable Hemingway way, maybe as in his "Death In The Afternoon." All the goring. Faintheartedness is nothing to be carried by bullfighters or by bone hunters, I suppose. If there were a way of going back to days of nobler more romanticized slaughtering in bullrings, without the controversy, I'd have to say it is more evident in our modern day Jurassic Park flicks where nerdish paleontologists are transformed into  fiendishly handsome toreadors.

I know I'm not making much sense. Bullfights and dinosaur rustling, what's to compare? One being non-civilized though colorful and bathetic, the other fantastical but forgivable because the beasts bite back. Oh, if only I could explain these machismo machinations. What a ruse. How song and dance does intrigue. Please write me again from South Dakota. I'd like to book one of those dusty dinosaur tours before I go extinct.  Bone hunts, bullfights, same difference.

A Jurassic forest - a
tense moment watching
my T Rex, grazing lightly
on the jugular

vein of some docile lizard, with
a toothy grin, when
Alan's mum stomped into the room
bellowing dinner

time and the intervening million
years or so turned
in a whirl of pages, tumbling
legs and screaming kids, and a jumble

of Alphabetti Spaghetti tubes, limp
in their bloodied ketchup pool,
clearly out-flavoured
the remembrance

of things
past.

The station wagon bounced down a dusty road toward the farm house, and Phoebe, who had just turned fifteen  felt the pit of her stomach coil, and tighten with dread. Gazing out the window she locked eyes on a bored looking cow slowly chewing a mangled knot of grass. Phoebe wondered in that moment if even the cows were more depressed in Bismarck.

Her step-father, “The Glenner”, had been too cheap to fly her back home to Oregon from a summer camp in Minnesota, and had arranged for their local minister, Cru Hayward, to pick her up along with his daughter, Lizzie. Phoebe’s sun burned skin ached as she pealed it off the sticky back seat. The air conditioner had broken down in Fargo, and the eight of them were all squeezed in like a pack of cranky sardines.  

Phoebe was going to be spending the rest of her hellish summer with complete strangers in Bismarck, North Dakota on a wheat farm complete with cows, chickens, and one grey mare along with Lizzie’s six cousins.

The car door swung open, and a large man wearing blood stained overalls with extremely bushy eye brows lunged toward them, “Why I wrecken’ it’s been goin’ on five years, Cru! Bout’ time you come home with the kids to work the farm.” He took an oily handkerchief out of his back pocket, and wiped the dripping sweat from his brows; appearing out of breath at the same time. Phoebe took note of how “Bushy Brows” had replaced the word “work” instead of “visit”, and suddenly felt as though a chicken feather was caught in the back of her throat. Cru Hayward looked stiff, and managed to put out his hand to shake Vern’s, but instead was pulled in tightly, and given a bear hug smudging the wet chicken blood on Vern’s overalls directly onto his brothers white Oxford shirt.

As Phoebe entered the farm-house a variety of scents wafted through the steamy air. Lizzie’s Aunt Doodie was nervously leaning over the kitchen sink peeling a large stack of potatoes so high they were beginning to topple off the counter one after another. An extremely obese cat  sat by her feet pushing them across the floor with as little energy possible.  Standing on a small foot stool in front of an old-fashioned *** belly stove stood, Trina, a small child around the age of five who was busy feeding a dog the size of a small pony. She appeared to be in her own unsupervised world; busily shoving strips of steaming barbecued  chicken from a platter into its wet slobbery mouth, and then licking her fingers.

Phoebe glanced into the nearby living room, and noticed the walls were decorated with handmade plaques quoting scriptures from the Bible along with various cheap prints of Jesus; like the kind you’d buy at a church fair. Small miniature figurines decorated the home throughout. An open bible lay on the arm chair of a tattered recliner.  Feeling self-conscious, and out of place, Phoebe tried to hide in one corner as she watched Lizzie hugging her Aunt Doodie’s belly wearing  a hand-made sweat shirt with “Elvis” on the front. Gospel music was playing loudly from the living room. Phoebe mumbled under her breath,  "Where's the donation jar?” Aunt Doodie’s eyes narrowed when she looked at Phoebe, “Did you say something, Dear? What’s your name?” Phoebe managed to croak out her name, and say she was just talking to herself.” Aunt Doodie gave her a wry smile, “Why you’ll have plenty of time to talk to yourself tomorrow in the wheat fields when we get you up to work at 4 a.m., Missy.” Her snarled lips faded, and she continued talking to Lizzie smiling big, “Now where were we, Lizzie darling?”

Phoebe already hated it there. It had been less than five minutes since she arrived. She began to think if she had a money left in her suit cases to take a bus home. She frantically dug in her front jeans pocket, and pulled out a piece of lint, and a dime.  

Lizzie’s cousin’s all stumbled into the kitchen wearing clothing that looked as though it had passed through several millenniums of “Goodwill Store’s” in the 1970’s. Their straw hats hung low over their  eyes, and  Lizzie could tell they were ******.  Lizzie’s cousins had all been stamped out by the same cookie cutter mold like twins. Their ages ranged from seventeen to thirteen, to age five. Trina the youngest being no doubt an accident.  Marty, the oldest at seventeen, wearing a ripped Metallica shirt was the first to speak, “Lizzie look at you! Why you all but growed up on us. I bet you’s the most popular girl in school with that pretty face of yours”. Marty was handsome in a Emelio Estevez actor kind of  way. Phoebe couldn’t help but lick his beautifully sculpted arms, and chest with her eyes; but when he caught her staring she quickly looked down at her shoes. She felt her face burning with embarrassment.

Aunt Doodie turned around swiftly on her bare heal with a large milk pail in her hands. "I'll be back girls. I'm out to the barn to milk the cow for supper. Don't break anything."
  
Twila was sixteen with black eye liner under her eyes, and red lipstick. She suddenly leapt onto Lizzie from behind, and covered her eyes while wrapping her large chicken fried steak fed legs around her. Her hair was curly, and extremely frizzy like it had not seen a comb in it for several years.  Twila whispered, “Hey Lizzie, who’s your dweebie friend? Don’t look like she can smile much. Maybe our cat got her tongue. She looks like one of those uptight city girls!” Lizzie couldn’t hold onto Twila any longer, and tried to drop her down gently. A loud “thud” bounced the floors as she fell. The inside of a nearby china closet rattled as she hit the floor forcing a glass plate to fall, and break. “Ahh  ****! That’s mama’s favorite platter.” Twila looked straight into Phoebe’s eyes, “We’ll just have to blame it on you, Phoebe. You just keep your mouth shut about it!” Ignoring that Twila had just accused her of breaking a platter Phoebe heard Lizzie mumble, “Oh, this here is my friend from home. We both went to summer camp in Minnesota together, and we’re her ride back home to Oregon.” Phoebe at this point was already imagining a large pig shaped nose on Twila's face; and not the kind that was cute. Twila glared, “Looks like you in lots of trouble now city girl”, and walked away with her cousins leaving her to stand alone in the decorated gospel room near the kitchen.

Phoebe wondered if she landed in some kind of Twilight Zone episode that had not been written yet. She decided to go for a walk all alone on the wheat farm until someone called after her for supper. Phoebe was lonely but she was lonely at home with her mom, and step-father too. They always left her to fend for herself, and her mother rarely spoke to her.  Phoebe felt as though it was like living with two ghosts you can hear; but can't see.  Besides, she had decided that this summer would be spent working on her writing. She had always wanted to be an author, after all, she had always noticed everything.
Her thought was broken when she heard someone say, “That sister Twila of mine is mean as a snake. Don’t pay no attention to her. To this day I feel like I must have been adopted. Hi, my name’s Shawna.” Shawna had a beautiful face, and was tall for her age. She stood about 5’8 with long blond hair making her look almost like a mermaid with her fair complexion. “My twin sister, Shaylynn, went into town to rent a movie for us all to watch tonight. We ain’t got internet. I think she said “Back To The Future” was finally available, or maybe it was “Jurassic Park”. Have you met Joel yet? He’s about your age. He’s always hanging around the bowling alley with them local boys. Don't know what they even have to say to one n' other. It's not like anything ever happens in this town.” Shawna seemed like the nicest out of all of Lizzie’s cousins as she reached out to give her a hug. Phoebe smiled politely saying, "If you don't mind I think I'm going to go for a walk. I think I need some air" while waving a quick goodbye.

When she returned from her walk she opened her journal to page one, and this is when it all began to get very interesting.

My Summer In Bismarck & Other Quirky Observations

by, Phoebe Snow

August 7th, 2015

The horizon seems to encircle this entire small farm as if someone drew with an orange crayon around it like a child would on paper, or perhaps with white chalk on the sidewalk. Everywhere I look it seems flat; and at night the moon hangs so low in the sky with the brightest stars next to it than I think I've ever seen in my fifteen years of life. Lizzie's Aunt, and Uncle, and all her cousins talk funny too. It's like they stretch out their "o's" when they speak. Kind of like hearing a bike tire that's going flat with a pin hole in it. It seems forever for it to finally run out of air; and sometimes you just want it over with as fast as possible. That's how they talk. I'm always finishing their sentences in my head ten minutes ago. These people seem so foreign, and yet I know them like a story.

Journal entry: August 16th, 2015

Marty has come into my room. He is standing in the doorway with  his chest pushed out. He is seventeen, and I am fifteen. I know what he wants by the gleam in his eyes. I won't give it to him.

I got up from my bed, and closed the door on his feet. Silently. I left the scent of coconut oil on my body drift toward him. An invitation; but not yet.

only today i felt this strange fear from boredom, i don't expect housewives to feel it, although i'm certain they do, brain-draining watching some Jurassic adaptation where man's imagination really did a runner - not into the fantastical but into the absurd - like in science fiction, did a runner, completely off the mark given chemists making shampoos and toothpastes and fertilisers... ethically-free science fiction - but this housebound fear from boredom, greater than a fear of death it seized me and rattled me, i had to go out to buy a few beers; just like it happens to really rich people, they make their homes into micro-units of what's out there, in society, a swimming pool when there's a communal one elsewhere, a massive library of unread books, when there are plenty of those elsewhere, home cinema, snooker table... it's the entire spectrum of social pastimes condensed into a single household... anyway, i got hot and bothered, i'm starting to think it was not a fear of boredom, but what to do with the piri-piri chicken i was marinating: tomato puree, 1tbsp balsamic vinegar, half a large lemon squeezed, 1sp sugar, 1tsp paprika, 1/2 tsp cajun pepper, 14g of parsley, mint, oil, 2 chillies, 2 tsp of garlic puree, salt to taste - whisked in a food processor; ~1kg of chicken - because i thought whether i should shove the chicken marinate in an oven bag and cook it for a while, or whether to take the chicken out from the marinate and place it on a baking tray... ****!

poems and book reviews these days, nothing more,
get someone else to do the legwork -
a thoroughly modern malaise -
social anthropology - titled *tribe -
the pros and cons of modern life and our
search for tribal mythology -
the 8x more chance of depression and
other mental deviations in wealthier
societies than poorer ones -
once it was called adventure, now
it's called tourism - after a while you sort
of get bored of the naked ego
and the clothing range your thought
provides you - unless you keep thinking
out the same thing, over and over again,
dressed like Armani, all black, nothing else -
odd, isn't it? they're playing the cat game,
cat wakes up, same ****, different cover,
well, the same cover - same fur - can't
change - the paradox or parody of
the fashion industry, i.e. that the designers
wear the same thing over and over again
and insist people require a spring collection,
the latest autumn trend.... parody.
so back to this piri-piri chicken      n'ah, not really,
i was thinking about what we already did,
this anti-tribalism, to have given ourselves
the opportunity to experience the least
amount of pain, the anaesthetic, sleep inducing
on the butcher's table more or less -
but we also created another anaesthetic,
this anaesthetic is not so subtle - it concerns beauty -
ever see it? ever walk into Tate Modern and
think about Raphael or Michelangelo?
you could tell me i'm overly nostalgic -
but what i see in plain sight is an anaesthetic in place,
against beauty, esp. in architecture -
who'd think of building a new Coliseum or
a St. Paul's - the Tate Modern (as you might
or might not know) is inside a power station,
big massive chimney - would have worked
better in the Battersea (Pink Floyd's Animals
album sleeve), but then St. Paul's is right opposite
and what a staggering dichotomy it is -
i'm sure that's what you call an anaesthetic in art,
the sort of art you have to get or not get
because, frankly, admiring a tin-can of tomato soup
even by Warhol's standards isn't exactly appetising -
i know, conveyor belt necessity and all, once
artists painted on commission for some duke or
duchess, or king to be adorning lavish palaces,
but as according to Walter Benjamin - the work
of art in the age of mechanical reproduction -
some could once claim the original to be worth
a stupendous amount of dosh, but with the above
mentioned essay, the original is worth diddly-squat,
because there is no actual original these days,
because artists don't necessarily have to invest
in raw materials - and the copying process is 100%
perfect, what with photocopying and all...
but **** me over once more, how am i going
to cook this piri-piri chicken?
the few beers took the problem off my hands,
i ended up marinating the chicken in a bag
but then shoved it into a baking tray
an covered with aluminium foil, forty odd
minutes and the chicken was tender - ~5 minutes
without the aluminium foil covering while
the oven was switched off and the temperature
was descending - the carbs? couscous -
alt. North African semolina - and extra cucumber
in tzatziki - a few hours later and i'm a little
buddha not thinking an ounce or a continent's worth
of suggestion... one of those rare albums
salmonella dub's  inside the dub plates,
i'm a real provincial with this album,
tumble **** here, tumble **** there,
never settling for a ****-garden -
i told you i'm just borrowing the language, in fact,
given my alcoholic and status as vermin among
the bulldog rigid British (Londoners can have
their little gay pride parade, whatever, they
better give me up for surgery to a veterinarian than
a human doctor, after all, i'm all ******* gerbil from
now on in, it doesn't take enough pacifists to turn
my attitude into a Neo-**** and bulldozer the Union
Jack into a shallow grave, i don't expect the Caribbeans
and the Pakistanis to usher words of: it's how it is,
a rite of passage, **** your cumin and your ****,
battle of Britain, who among the R.A.F. flew and spat fire?
us) i'm more Apache in a bigger zoo than the one in
Reagents Park, i'm in a conservation zoone -
i'm Aboriginal - shaman of the fire water -
i'll be as ******* ridiculous as i want - go chant
you little kirtan get together mantras going,
i'm sure you'll *****-fight-those-pigeons dead without
a single coo being ushered in - and your little yoga stints
asking questions about the flexibility of the skeleton
not pulverised by scientific eyes for a schematic and
a schooling rubric to domino up the cranium with mandible,
ulna and radius etc. -
but at least i know what sort of country i live in,
and what country is wandering into political apology that's
too late, in ratio 27:1, soon to be Turkey + the Yugoslavian
gape, Albanian and Macedonia by 2020 -
>30:1 - great Welsh ratio that is, oh ****, wait, Scotland too?
i never thought about it coming - there's my 2 cents
on the topic, and that England is becoming more American
by the day? that's good? really?! i thought the
aim of England was to inspire America rather than
vice versa... what a ****-storm these few days ended
up being; ol' McDonald didn't have a farm, but
had the slogan - *i'm lovin' it!

the way i see it, the internet doesn't really exist for poets
of the 21st century: instant gratification in other realms does,
the digital free-love movement,
mobile internet - and the atypical human
behaviour of sorts;
counterclockwise there's another movement
happening - not based on a dozen social
media accounts - digital selection,
it's there - the komtur movement -
you use a sieve and you add the filter, without
even considering the deep web -
you imagine yourself in a Tron exercise -
you're basically saying: what should i
include in the virtual reinterpretation of
the high street - i haven't bothered going to
the high street / junk street for ages -
Oxford Street is like Jurassic Park for me -
herds of edible oxen daydreaming while
walking - poets always have the acid tongue,
better treat a woman with truth than
shelter 10 concubines and lie -
tss! (venomous spit sound) - where the big
boy'oh and his ******* Ferrari now?
on the next ***** - like i planned out prior -
there was a leather settee sitting in someone's
driveway, i had a beer and a cigarette and
felt the need for a breather - but it's in someone's
driveway... it would look odd, no?
around the corner a John the Baptist moment,
another settee sitting on the pavement -
you know how surreal it feels to sit on something
that's intended for the indoors when sitting outside?
i usually take rigid monk attention to postured
retirement from walking, but a settee on the pave
was like... sitting on a cloud - i joined
the feline traffic wardens for a while, 1, 2, 3, 4 cars
passed, i snorkelled two cigarettes and finished the
bear - the night... mm... is this surreal?
well... imagine that Brazilian billionaire and
his Olympic Games bid parking his car
in his living room... i parked my sofa on the
pavement - he's a butterfly incubator, i'm a tornado.
in poetry you have metaphors, puns...
i treat all psychiatric terms as equivalent to what
poetry uses - split-mind is both imagery and metaphor -
i'm already wearing a wedding ring -
allocated to the mediation of money, so she's
a ******* in heaven - i call her my pain in the ***
because she is a scorching sound in my left
hemisphere, it's this constant nagging -
or be like a Kantian bachelor - test your strength alone -
you'll have cognitive arguments with yourself,
you might do the whole schizophrenic episode -
or like me... hold keen on the stern and recover
with meteoric ambition to count the number
of peas in a glass like some autistic genius -
shame that science never had any romantic dimension -
Kierkegaard explored Faust - it ended up with Faust
being more the mythology that was intended -
he simply overpowered the love interest -
a love too diabolical - and unto hell we go, less
romantic and even more diabolical - some poets
write 20 poems a year, applause applause it's all great
because it's like taking a selfie of the poet on the toilet
seat - but my throne the throne of thrones,
Napoleon sat on a throne and the warring fields
were filled with **** - i sit on the throne of thrones
and the fields don't matter, i just **** on the throne
of the French Emperor; oi! listen, i'm trying to draw
return to the narrative linear, it's not easy when
you end up constantly stimulated by digression, digression,
it's hard enough to stop the river, let alone build a
Hoover dam or a bridge - o.k., now that i'm
less excited by subconscious stimulants of talk talk talk
(subconscious? yeah, read a few articles
about Layla, Harrison, No *** Please, Modern
reinventions of Arranged marriage with psychiatrists etc.)
i figured, i must write a 21st century poem...
i'm not much of a gamer, fair enough like any teenager
i played the Playstation - didn't get to no. 2,
that old grey block of plastic -
Tenchu and Final Fantasy Seven (with a walkthrough,
i was busy doing homework), and the Sims -
the wormhole spectacular - get the Sim to sit at the
computer... BOOM! cross-dimensional wormhole,
started freaking out... but the tablets are around
and i got speeding on Raving Fever -
PLAYER43588 - number of wins 1602 - mostly on the 2nd car
in the gallery - and mostly won on a 2,000 / 4km bet -
how? the physics - the nitro on max, the braking the handling
the acceleration and the speed on max -
but it's the physics! the ****** physics! most players
i go against are like robots... they press the nitro button
and quickly accelerate - i just sit back and either wait
for them to crash against the traffic, or when they don't,
after i have gained from the acceleration per se,
and having reached the max speed, then i nitro the ******...
it's like a Zeno paradox, i'm the tortoise and they're
Achilles - it's irrational to counter a good acceleration
with nitro - a schematic and less verbiage:

car A
nitro                    (143kmph)
                                               z. (~184kmph)
                                                                                    nitro
                                                                                    car B

z. denotes the zenith of speed - if these androids figured it
out properly, they wasted their nitro boost to reach the
maximum speed, i only wasted the acceleration potential
and got slightly delayed - once hitting the maximum
speed of 143kmph - i then press on the nitro and my zenith
is at ~184kmph - they're stuck on a plateau of maximum,
while i'm decreasing to their zenith of mutual maximum -
that's why i win so often, the frustrating thing for them
is that i always beat them on the last 100 metres or so.
basically i'm slowing down, while they're stuck on
stead speed, and by slowing down i'm beating them.
i guess scientists aren't ****, but neither is raising children,
who best knows the adventure of the mind?
and how to make boredom worth your while?

Love.
Of course, the great spirit said that word
when he set down the majesty of mountains
thus, spread curling softness through the seas,
sending little creatures wriggling, crawling, mewling, howling,
oh ye little fish and fowl, doodled up the dinosaurs,
a lumbering jurassic joke, then unleashed leviathan
from just a speck, and made some others walk *****.

Love.
That word we need to hear
and the word that hurts so much.
It comes crowned with garlands, glistening
with the dew of pleasure. And underneath, the horn thrusts up
Dionysius and Venus, processions of Priapus, frenzied satyriasis
blind Baccus, luscious Pan and Zeus.
Ah yes. The juice.

Love.
And who has not recklessly ignored this word
or squandered it on abandoned, neon nights
that paled before the coming of cold mornings,
and who has not held back this word
from loved ones,
cowards of commitment,
circumcelliate, averruncate and absquatulate?

Love.
That little, mighty word that dominates our lives.
But what can we require of life and how can we survive
indifference in the barren waste and stay alive outside
without its whisper, without its cry and shout? And how can we aspire
to ecstasy without the tumult and whirlwind of its desire,
without its warmth, without its fire? So, we must turn again
to love's softness and love's pain. Again. And yet again.

Love.
It's easy, really. So go on, say it.  
It's time. Why not?  It's for the mothers and the lovers,
the fathers, it's for all the children who blindly seek.
It's for the teenagers and trembling old and the outcast and the isolate.
Even the soldier with the gun. Especially. It's for everyone.
The grave is lonely, deep and cold. By giving love before it's too late
those soft wings of the dove of peace unfold.
Love is the playmate. Enjoy, reciprocate.
This is the message I communicate.

We used to play guns with sticks
and we all knew how to die convincingly
with playing cards in our spokes
we summit hills atop motorcycles
ratatatatatattt
we walked through woods
explorers and pioneers
waiting for dinner or supper or bedtime
when summer was another world entirely
and the stains on our clothes
told stories
and not worries
We would carve sticks into spears
with knives our mothers did not know we had
today we hunt pheasant
we never did catch one
but we made dens deep in the woods
and climbed trees until we didn’t know how to get down
the hay bales stacked four stories high
in the farmer’s field
was a jungle gym
and when the farmer chased us away
in his combine harvester
we were playing Jurassic Park
back when girls were silly, annoying little things
that none of us were quite sure why we liked
and fights were forgotten within the hour
we had better things to laugh at
a marble composition book filled with ****** raps
and graffiti designs
we would take stones and make them into entire planets
but before long
our shadows caught up with us
a stick was just a stick
a bike just a way to beat the heat
and we were all too aware
of the special effects

I left Florida for the weather.

Where summer pulses stagnant heat,
to the rhythm of waves crashing.
Today feels like yesterday,
feels like last year,
reminds me of that time five years ago
when thunder seduced my soul.

Ssshhh.
That's death rising from swollen swamps,
listening for the sound of prolonged blinkers.
Jurassic eyes ogle leather flesh,
cracked,
salty,
alien.

I moved north for a fight.

I jumped in the ring with scholars,
pennies clamoring in sidewalk cups,
applause.

A crooked nose now leads the way,
shadows take root beneath youthful,
sun-kissed pools of blue.
I'm still spinning.

I left Atlanta for the people.
Well, just one really.
The girl whose soul once kissed thunder in the rain,
and can't quit chasing storms
until they touch again.

For the moment we rest
A single spot light saved their life tonight
Flurry wind carrying mist to their nest was the best to achieve
Feel content to perish
If my words will sink, float, grow or spin
With a view of her luminous gold green hazel piercing rings
Last night fall went hand in hand
Apropos of the longing after depart
Underneath a sky embrace
Syncing out through the spirals that she draws
Was a vanishing scent
That's impossible to seek and find
I'm a ****** for skin, snorting her all the way to my mind
There's a sign on my arm
And a still beating part that you own
And a vow to never do you harm
from my red Jurassic heart

I buried them in a shallow grave

outside the sunroom where their cage hung

rain washed their bones into a deep earth cellar

Where I descend by night with my lone candle

to find them fixed in strata, yet not fixed

scaled claws striking Jurassic dragonflies



My shadow flickers and dissolves

as I sit at the sunroom desk

Tiny scaled claws strike my head

Pinioned dervishes scold:

My suit of black and white feathers

my smooth hands and my scientist's smirk

my two-finger typing and opposable thumbs

my missing wings and manifesting teeth



We dinosaurs live on, incantations of ancestral rebirth

templates used, discarded, and used again

as our sphere cycles on, now warming, now cooling

the uniforms change, the costumes evolve

but the sudden-death scrimmage is eternal.

I grew into my youth without fearing dinosaurs,
Because I watched too many re-programmings of Jurassic Park.
I wasn't aware that my basketball skills could take me places.
I was born here, I ran through cornfields and tall shades of grass,
playing hooky with *******, hopscotch with ******,
yet still averaging 24.6ppg while playing only 20 minutes a game.
It seemed so easy and simple at first, doing these things.
My neighbor Craig down the street,
used to work at the children's hospital so he always had access to needles;
all he wanted from me was a stack of metal spoons
that I could steal from my grandmother's house so we could dissolve the ******.
“This ****'ll make you feel like you could never die”, he would always say.

It was the 3rd quarter of our high school opening game against Fullerton.
We played at the redeveloped convocation 20 miles south of town,
because our high school received a bomb threat earlier that week.
The court constructed with cheers and boos due to my low field goal percentage.
I stashed my lucky line inside of my practice shorts in the locker room,
so I could lie to my coaches about needing some air.

My nostrils captured the effects of this white powdery substance,
as my body started to fail and deteriorate.
I think I felt my heart stop beating when I came to the free throw line.
First shot...air ball.
Second shot...no shot, body falls to the hardwood.
My shoes squeaked like rabid mice without control,
my right leg became convulsive and spastic, my left moved none.
The floor below my body drenched in a bilinear merging of crimson red and **** yellow.
The last image that I witnessed before my eyes left this world
Were the faces of the opposing cheerleaders,
Their young eyes bleeding blue and yellow,
mascara and grief running down their pretty cheeks.
They knew this from the beginning, my parents did.
They thought I had changed and found a new sport to love.
As my body laid on the floor, my parents laid in the belly of the audience,
Incapable of shedding tears,
because their suffering overtook their ability to cry.

I stood at the street corner under the blistering heat, waiting for the bus to arrive.
I'm not even supposed to be out today, I thought, but I hate to be stuck at home on a dismal Wednesday.

I left the house wearing my Jurassic Park shirt not knowing where I was headed, then decided coffee was always a good idea.
After months of forbidding it, I permitted myself to peer into the corners of my memory and recall the name of that quaint little coffee place you used to work at.
'The service here is amazing, ain't it?'
'You should let other people tell you that.'
'Well, it pays to be courteous.'
Thinking of you seems to be harmless now.

Sweat started to trickle down my nape. The cars were at a standstill. I assumed the stoplight was broken until it turned green and cars started to speed past me. Out of habit, I checked the plate of every white sedan that passed by, in hopes of seeing yours. The light turned red again.

I could see the bus from where I stood. I scanned cars that didn't even remotely resemble yours. For a split-second, I thought I caught a glimpse of the familiar rickety white auto. Don't be stupid, I reminded myself.

The light went green. I saw that I had made no mistake. It's him. My insides went numb.

I struggled to keep a straight face; to remain as stoic as I was seconds ago, but I could feel my expression betray me for a moment. I crossed my arms over my chest and looked away. The sedan passed and I could almost swear it slowed down as it drove by me.

I couldn't even tell if it was really you in the driver's seat. I remember often complaining about your windows being too tinted. I tried not to grin at the memory.

When you had passed, I allowed myself one last glance at the plate, and then you were gone.

Thoughts competed for a spot in my head. Did he see me? Did he recognize me? Was he with anyone? Where was he going?

Was it even real?

The bus honked louder and snapped me out of my daze. I got on.

• • •

I was sprawled on the couch with a book on my lap, but I couldn't take my eyes off of the phone. What was left of my sanity argued that you had no reason to reach out. Still, I waited.

At this point, I was drenched in flashbacks of what was, and it all feels like it was only a dream. I was in the passenger seat of your car again, my eyes half-lidded, classical music on the radio; and through my peripheral, I could see the sunlight hitting your face, and I had never seen anything so captivating. The reality of you seems to have come out of a novel - arriving at the most unforeseen time and staying only for as long as the Universe grants. A mirage, in every sense of the word. I wondered if any of it happened at all.

The phone rang.

Are the bluebells really a delightful hue
when they habitat railway banks
They are wild and not so rare
like the country we reside in.
We are a barren land
once proud but
with all wealth stripped away
Our Jurassic coastline erodes
likewise a once bedrock of national pride.
Our spirits wane,
we are too self conscious to crowd
amongst our own.
We have been too disorientated
to uphold our truisms

Minuscule cockroaches creak
Conspicuously around the crude crumbs
On the dusty kitchen counter,
And tadpoles squirm in the cremated creek.

The porridge poured itself
For the poor stray kitten,
Who was too spritely
For eureka's euthanization,
Triumphant in trespassing
The proximity of the porch.

Meanwhile, the revolving rover
Imitated the raunchy rocket ships,
Launching like fervent fertility
Interceding September's secret,
Sacred admirers of ethereal pyres.
The sepulchre's soma
Spread from the peach's center
Like the terrific thighs of a virile *****.

Jurassic travels ,
Machines running on ancient carcass,
Annulling the terra firma
Of its aloe vera-like virginity,
And courtesans adorned with jewels,
Pretending to be Aphrodite?

Just as Jupiter does,
Joy wears covetous rings..


Originally written 8/12/11
Revised 10/19/14

(c) 2014 Brandon Antonio Smith

Not long ago, if you could call a few years ‘not long’,
when I was still gloomily drawn to that mysterious magnet
known as the mighty Mississippi, I uncovered a nautilus fossil
not far from the Tennessee-Arkansas border, where the land
churns like red butter into the infinity of the Mississippi.
A nautilus hundreds of miles from the closest deep water.
(And only fifteen minutes from Graceland!)
They say most of the Deep South used to belong to the floor
Of some vast Jurassic swamp or sea or river—I forget which…
In the grooves of this shell-rock nature keeps its own history.
No stranger to change as the dust and mud reveal me.

Think how much change
you’ve witnessed in your life already.
Today, tomorrow and yesterday change is a hot-traded commodity, up in the Dow,
down in the Nasdaq, two day super-shipping in the fast lane.
Change customizable, ordered up and hot and ready-to-go,
the hobo on the street asking me for some change;
I told him to change his ways, get a better rate,
exchange those rags for a business suit and some britches.
He just laughed and said: “Huh, are you kiddin me?
In this day and age a man can have twenty lives in a lifetime.
I’m just asking you for a little change…”

It’s been done to death and back a million times this age.
My friends are always telling me I need to change my ways.
That I need to roam and range, that all wise wordsters roam and range.
“Change you can believe in!” But let’s just change the channel.
Onto something else, something new! Everything built for the times,
none of it made to last. See how we age and distance so fast!
Two million years in the making, we’re living proof of the past.
Don’t be a stranger to change; sit back and enjoy it while it lasts.

The boy in the park with pigeon eyes
“What is the rake of human history?” he asks me.
Cruelty and pathetic little bird-like people,
all their seed spent carrying half-ton rocks up
to the tippy-top of the Tower of Babble.
If you possessed a machine of infinite light and speed
would you go back to before change existed?
Could you resist it? Or would the blackness then lead you back to now?
Wondering how—how it all got started.
Change is strange, only the rabbit knows
how deep the rabbit hole will go.

All our lying lives spent flying,
and when we finish no one starts and no one goes.
all of us pondering the unshareable experience.
The world keeps winding on an invisible string
but the weight of the wait in line is unbearable.
A raindrop falls from the sky and hits the shell-rock in my hand
And looking down at the nautilus fossil
I get a chill, for it tells me there are creatures
without words, without hearts, dreams or ears
that have slithered through the dark untouched by change
      for millions and millions of years…