Ears are like keyholes
Words are like keys
If what is said doesn't fit,
it won't go in.
If what is said is denied,
the words will be changed
to fit the ears.
But every notch you fill,
every carve you make,
is only hurting you.
It's a pain that is subtle at first,
but the reality of it sets in;
you crumble to pieces.
I've changed so many keys
to fit so many ears,
but I can't stop,
even when every tear is like acid.
Ears only want specific keys,
and will turn away anything else.
It's about time someone listened
to the raw words that mumble in my mind.
It's about time that I force the key in,
instead of shaping it to their liking,
instead of leaving scars on my cheeks.
It's about time,
for them to
face reality.

Someone once told me that love was blind.
Youth is wasted on the young,
We are all going to die.
After un-clutching scraps of what I'll never find,
This is all that I've brought.
I am all that is mine.

Don't ever, ever, little girl,
Listen to the old.
The world of those who
Raised them were as dark as
Devils compared to the
Funlit days we live.
To them, infatuation came
In work's way.
To them, romance was
Mind's comfort; the
Substance of fantasy.
In our world, your heart's
Every beat for another
Rings as true
To Love's ears as
Her own
To herself.

Yet the cloak hangs so heavily
Around all of these scenes.
Each notion a portrait,
Undistinguished and vague yet
Littered with details strewn in
Alarming
Array.
I take with rock salt
All that they've had to say.
For how does dim
Memory
To a feeling
Compare?

Let us forget to look back
And listen for
Wisdom.
Let us forget to ask
For opinions; vantage points.
All fingerprints blur
In time and fade forgotten
Into their surfaces; the
Grip they once formed
Long, long released.
Love, if only for a second.
Love, even if you know
That it's wrong.
No love ever was.
Love.
You'll have bigger
Regrets in time.
Only we know
What it means to be
Exactly this
Young
Today.

Only I
See through these keyholes
Carved upon my Face.
I am free from pre-conceived restraints.
I am a beacon
Of naïve wisdom,
A sponge for all feelings
Un-hardened by fate.
Suggestions
Directions
Instructions abound.
I am free from these shackles,
Boundless heartwaves
Resound

I see not your keyholes for the
Key in my eye. You are
Divine Feminine expressing Herself
Through yourself; as yourself.
Quill dipped in own wisdom.
Heart's blood and history.
Afloat in eternities of
Utter female
Warmth.
Someone once told you that love was blind.
That youth was wasted on the young.
I don't want to hear you
Sounding that old
Ever again. Notions.
Heartwaves. Manifestations.
Art saved. Inspirations.
Emotions.

Write on the bathroom wall this:  


Diligence is probably slaying rebellion

Dreaming comes out of an atomic bomb

Your girlfriends in a gang that’s lead by prostitutes  

Cavemen getting punched in the face by men  

Werewolves developing a crush on skinheads  

Soldiers experimenting with martyrs  

Your nextdoor neighbor pretending not to know a *****  

A gypsy writing love letters to a villain  

A guy you once dated driving away from a distant memory  

Your mother at a funeral with an executioner

Mind control freak making eye-contact in an elevator with a flight of birds  

Gleefully bulldozing gigantic flaming embalmers underground  

Ferociously inspiring detail-oriented museums in the dark  

Painfully sorting through stainless steel students backwards  

Electronically sorting monophonic apparitions in the shadows  

Faithfully inhaling Armenian scorpions at tea time  

Briskly hovering above loud controlled substances eaten by America and spat out  

    Dream about this next time you sleep:  

Quizzically exquisite keyholes inside a sunken ship  

Wearily alcoholic skeletons invading our love  

Sharing sternly precious lithographs with Charles Manson  

Adoringly high-pitched frescos out on the streets  

Wildly crunchy affairs with reckless abandoned hope  

Her boyish handymen is like Mona Lisa without her brows

Sensually cuddling big pistols  

The AntiChrist finds the cure for cancer in the local pet shop

Mary Magdalene can sometimes lead to your soul’s desire  

*** can (and often does) lead to motherhood  

Absolutism has never touched cooperation  

The Tao Te Ching manifested properly may ease the destructiveness of Christ  

******* is hindered by believing in motherhood  

Nature encourages rebirth and recycled courage  

Ashtanga Yoga is more important than victory  

An inspired mind isn’t always The Bible  

Energy must always conquer evolution  

*** is a decent alternative to nightmares wouldn’t you agree?  

Electricity is a manifestation of mercy and Tesla  

Pleasure feeds on Gandhi’s sweat ridden bald head  

Candidly breaking dormitories brimming with joy  

Barely used unstable translators outside the lines  

Enjoying calm lavish casino hotels with the electric eager manicurists of tomorrow  

A janitor burying a troop of apes while nature contributes to death and new yesterday’s  

The unknowable comes out of knowledge  

A ***** mind finds the cure for ignorance in patience and the aloha spirit

Education contains traces of drugs and alcohol and also combats drugs and alcohol  

Satan always enjoys Richard Dawkins.

Smiles locked away behind doors
Tip tapping of feet upon the floors
A closed up room for two souls
A love seen only through keyholes

Laughter heard through the walls
As two hearts tumble down the halls
A slight change to the pace of my pulse
And an emotional reaction of convulse

I realize that my heart has speed up
My mind can't seem to shut up
Not sure if you and I are a thing
Or is this just a little something something?

- E.A.F

~

gold-encrusted jewels dance
on sun-drenched ocean stacks,
his rugged rocks etched deep
by her waves from far beneath,
and Pacific’s gusty breath;
his wind-swept islets burn,
aflame in sunset's dying embers,
like a lover's siren call.
his chiseled keyholes waiting
for the ciphered piercing rays
to collide in rushing tidal spray.
unlocking sunset's golden hour...
surging forth then quickly fades,
as sunbeam fingers slowly slip,
beneath horizon's sultry lip;
dusk unfolds in magic hues,
molten rose turns scarlet blues,
night descends as one by one,
we raptured star-kissed lovers
disembark this ferris wheel;
the curtain falls again,
with sea and rocks
rehearsing lines
to play again another day.
this their theatre
of the night,
performed by two alone,
beneath the moon
and starry sky.

~

*post script.

our last time through in 2004 was a blur on our way through to San Diego, an exhilarating ride for certain, with all of its bends and curves experienced top down in a convertible, but hardly doing justice to Big Sur’s stunning scene in mere hours; we told ourselves we simply had to return.  

it took eleven years, and this time we spent a full five days and nights along Highway 1, towing a camper and slow-driving south from Monterrey all the curves to Morro Bay, exploring just about every hike and lookout in between; and in so doing, validating our return in a most satisfying way.  Big Sur is officially off our bucket list!  her sunsets were particularly rewarding, especially two... one enjoyed at sea level, from the sand and keyholes at Pfeiffer Beach day use area, the other delighted us from high above the ocean waves, seated at the picnic table of our cliff-side camp site at Kirk Creek Campground.

a most refreshing time to recuperate and recharge our spirits; five glorious days of disconnection, reconnecting to nature, each other and best of all, life at the speed of sunsets and star gazing; evenings spent round the campfire with no cell, no i-pad, no laptop, only the light of the fire, the stars and that sparkle in each other's eyes!

Marooned  land-locked
    on  island  earth

Born with an orphan’s
    unknowable ache

Born with an empath heart
– always feeling too much –
mystic receptors wide awake
    in a highly sensitive soul

It’s as if I've walked along
      forever alone,
    one step at a time,
    lost in a restless nebula
from the earth to the moon

Consciously dreaming
      to steal away, 
bearing the weight of the sky, 
upwards over the mountain,
away from these chains
         that bind

    The maelstroms echo
behind silenced, probing eyes
with an unsated thirst
      to be wanted
    dead or otherwise:

Never understanding
    the reasons why,
spinning around in my head;
where "once upon a time"
        was hidden,
        buried alive              

A lifetime spent trying
    to unlearn the things
    I wish I’d never
    sought to know,
    clinging to the love
I've touched in my life
  evermore enwombed
       in my heart

    Passing milestones:
walking another barefoot mile
passing so many locked doors
    without keyholes
– way outside the lines –

    Choking on all
    the latent words
      lay fallow, 
      left unsaid 
Always looking for
something dreamt
but seldom manifest 

Growing so tired and weary
with no one standing by my side;  
no one to lay down beside me
    to take a rest for awhile

Just another chapter
in a timeless same old story;
  another dark star
      burned – out
      – vanished –
into the utter obscurity
of a sky so close and yet
       so far away...


Jesse Stillwater ... August 22, 2018

God loafs around heaven,
without a shape
but He would like to smoke His cigar
or bite His fingernails
and so forth.

God owns heaven
but He craves the earth,
the earth with its little sleepy caves,
its bird resting at the kitchen window,
even its murders lined up like broken chairs,
even its writers digging into their souls
with jackhammers,
even its hucksters selling their animals
for gold,
even its babies sniffing for their music,
the farm house, white as a bone,
sitting in the lap of its corn,
even the statue holding up its widowed life,
but most of all He envies the bodies,
He who has no body.

The eyes, opening and shutting like keyholes
and never forgetting, recording by thousands,
the skull with its brains like eels--
the tablet of the world--
the bones and their joints
that build and break for any trick,
the genitals,
the ballast of the eternal,
and the heart, of course,
that swallows the tides
and spits them out cleansed.

He does not envy the soul so much.
He is all soul
but He would like to house it in a body
and come down
and give it a bath
now and then.

I downloaded my honest expression of feelings for you
but it came as a zip file
and I’m hardly tech savvy
so It sits in my hardrive with the other long lost files
like that first bike ride without training wheels
and christmas back before it all got so painfully awkward
two spaces above it
is the memory of being chased by angry farmers on tractors
and the file I edited last
was my self-image profile picture

I want you.
but sometimes wires don’t connect and the connection tends to
falter - lag
so I sent my mind to the pornographic district
where the lights flicker so red, like your favorite shade of lipstick
and for a few minutes there I committed biblical abomination
which is a fancy ******* way of saying I jacked off
before checking my local news site for the five day forecast
rain, rain, rain, rain, but a hint of sunshine

Woah! That’s a risky site! Are you sure you still want to continue?
not really. But last time I checked I never asked you for anything
so I’m buying the ingredients for happiness on ebay
two parts forty ounces of malt liquor
three parts resin stained smoking apparatus
two parts the wrong crowd
and ten parts stupid *** decisions
now I’m stumbling upon locked door keyholes
to see bootleg copies of your next summer blockbuster
they’re worth the ten dollars a pop - I’m just broke

I tried to upload a **** shaming video of you to youtube
but it was taking too **** long to process
so instead I tweeted all 140 of the characters I have played
and wrote you a bittersweet, scathing review
4.5 stars out of 5 - would not recommend
#FuckYou
I would still swipe right to your front door on silent nights
smelling like a bad rock and roll cliche
saying the same one liners over and over again

I listened to your swan song on spotify
and yeah, I’ll admit, It had me swaying
but that might just be the new “Twenty dollar a week diet”
I was forwarded online
so skype with my self-esteem
and IM me your holy of holies
and I’ll pretend whichever God you follow is up there somewhere
maybe I am just a post on your blog
maybe I’m just the virus causing you to curse at low speed internet
but I think you should leave your ISP a nasty voicemail
because this headspace is corrupted
and this computer is crashing towards an eternal shutdown

Some where he sits or gorily sleeps
The blank stare behind a rigid cut
Eyes of a seductive Mongoloid
Offering nothing for the poison of the sea

The arbitrary swirls of mechanical time pieces
Add  heavy track to this an
already shady beat

all the While A reproduction of some Germanic doll
Shrinks smaller into the keyholes
of his frontal lobe

A pleasant amnesia of the purist kind
This anglo doll she is now just a capsized pin
Her black and white knee socks mold into a geosed canvas
Ready to be re-painted with all the emotions he has left

What if I told you I loved you?
By the stairs with the works of post-modern misunderstanding
But it will be just a whisper of shear for the racket builds upward
The spinning mechanics joined by the school busses stopping forever

Yes that statement of old is clearly devoid
Merrily a swallow’s anthem
An absurd tangent of malfeasance
Almost a monosyllabic destruction

Only some misshapen coke spoons remain
As well asthe hands of a man who is much safer out of bed
The saline was much too dodgy
And the sheets…..Well they were never clean

I have seen the boy tear at the stitches his shadow sowed,
You are an old man who I have neither a need, nor a want of anything,
I have seen lungs gasp for air while the stupid ******* drowned you,
Hidden in the Old Mill, left to drink Complan and ***** nightmares,
I have seen your mother dying whilst she was making the children sandwiches from her bed,
The Lost Boys forgot, grew old and had Lost Boys of their own,
I have seen you try to fly from the world which is now on your shoulders, whilst the eagle circles in the sky you dreamt of,
The storm of madness continually crashes against our walls of concrete and imagination,
I have seen failure after successive failure wave to me from those eyes,
A father and a husband locks himself alone when the sentiment kicks his guts,
I have seen a head wrenched back to the barrage of pills and pain by wretched Ephialtes and his like,
Running from the hospital because they want more blood,
I have seen you scared, naked and drinking toilet water,
Everything went blue and time slowed down in riotous Belfast,
I have seen ****** and *****

We nursed our bruised bodies and mutinous minds from themselves,
I have seen late night talks of tears but freeing none whilst brooding on Dundee benches,
You misunderstand my intentions but I do not blame you,
I have seen petrified thoughts begging for company, abandoned to fight the lonely nights,
In dark rooms full of empty Coke cans and never-to-be-used condoms,
I have seen the miscarried baby and the aborted foetus and I have wept in secret over dreams of their lamented birthdays,
Prodigies of stardust and walking infinity,
I have seen a baby boy born into dyslexia, depression and death,
Reflections meander on the television with maddened eyes and religious fists,
I have seen the bite marks on my own arms as Fenrir knaws at his chains,
Graveyard whispers cry of Elliott Smith and James Dean,
I have seen the suicide note torn into pieces, but put aside ready to be glued back,
My brothers Icarus, Atlas and Prometheus all shake their heads in dismay,

I have seen friends and strangers and imagined all lives unlived,
Felt every tear I have not cried, cried every tear I have not felt,
I have seen the life that will never be and thereby choose not to live,
Sing a requiem for futures lived,
In the present now passed into the past,
I have seen prison bars,
I have seen closing doors without handles, hinges or keyholes,
I have seen the invisible voice,
I have seen beaten tracks leading nowhere,
I have seen blue eyes stare back from the abyss,
As soon as see me, gone,
I have seen forests of my mind burning,
I have seen the scorched mattress,
I have seen a lifeline on your wrist dying to live,
I have seen Ragnarok,
I have seen too much and felt not enough,
Though I could bear no more

Holy Trinity of death, divorce and debt,
Haunt the adult-minded children,
Manifest the shroud of sorrow around you,
As if a shield of darkness unto all light,
My legs are not yet buckled but do sink with every blinded step,
I have seen words upon pages but not felt the anguished breath slap me as you scream them in my face,
I have seen everything and nothing, that which has and has not,
I have seen things never to have been, be,
I have seen things never to have happened, happen,
I have seen a woman **** for feelings that never come,
I have seen her undress me with her stare and then blink,
I have seen a forgotten man escape his crazed mind by losing it,
I have seen him in love with ghosts that are not dead,
I have seen children fading from photographs that do not exist,
I have seen them lost in a Neverland that never was,
I have seen; now please let me see no more, not ever,
Now I am lost,
Now I have seen enough,
Please no more, not ever,
I have seen enough.
I have seen enough.

Everything (physically) erased, nothing ever forgotten. Every word spoken or written is engrained in my brain, I will never be the same. Unlike no other you came you conquered you (changed). Seven existential hours that would change my DNA and internal making, making, making what I knew up until then surprisingly malleable. Your words your actions your face your voice filled up every millimeter of me that everything else inside was pushed to the brim and seeped out of my pores. Everything I once was became everything you ever were, ever are. There is a chair in the back of my mind that is reserved for you to sit there and continue to hotwire (my mind) and thoughts into something much better than I ever could have fathomed. Your puppet strings control what and who I am and it is impossible to think there is any other living organism that could possess that undeniable ability. There is a keyhole somewhere inside myself. There is a key inside of you. Keyholes the size of pinholes as vast as Sirius. Small, believable, existing. Keys the shape of orchids and birch as natural as the metamorphosis of roots (into) trees. I never knew what (my) purpose was until you. Or maybe I always knew what I was before you and you opened the windows to the (soul) otherwise known as brown eyes so timid to everyone besides you. The smallest organs became so (full of) nothing but visions of you. There is a special place in my slowly beating heart perfectly executed to fit all of you. A twin bed that only holds one girl has an infinite amount of room for whatever (love) you could continue to bring into my life. The impossibility to (for)get and erase has left me with an endless amount of hope to see you again. The possibility of knowing that you are still somewhere out there and I am still somewhere down here, although unsure where. I cannot ascertain whether or not feelings are reciprocated but I know I know they are. I know you know where you are. I know you know I do not know where I am but you could figure it all out for me. You had it all figured out for me. Plans stretched farther than the 3000 miles separating my red string from yours. Our strings are still connected. There is nothing in the world that can cut them no matter the distance no matter the people no matter the time no matter the place. I know and somehow you know fate will bring our two oceans together. One calm ocean full of creatures so logical and tides so serene they make a beautifully flawed human being known as yourself. One ocean plagued by waves and uncertainty as to what is below the surface that makes up a human being, me. Both oceans surround land full of love. Our continents will merge. Our love will emerge. (You, only you.)

I only come out at night
cause thats the time i like
i'm not playing with any rules
so if you fall your the one who lose
its not love i'm looking for
just an escape
a key to the door

you can't get me off your mind
that's why i think its time
to open the door and run out
before you ask me what its all about
didn't think you could understand
you were an escape
a mistake i had to make

these eyes
have got you in a trance
these eyes
make you want to dance
these eyes
are far too sure to last

i'm trying not to feel bad
i don't want to be so sad
but i did what i had to do
to unlock a part of me in you
so much for going with the flow
it happened so fast
next time i'll say no

Brian Molko was already doing the current wannabe-trend of trans-sexuality long before trans-sexuality was a common "thing"... tracing back some ulterior taboo settings... today on my way to work i spotted my first trans-******: wow! obviously he had manly hands... large... he was tall... he had large feet... but slender legs... and a face, with all that necessary make-up of eyeliner... hair? not very long... shoulder length... yes... a deep voice... but then again my godmother has a husky voice from all the smoking and drinking... but i fancied him... the dynamic on the tube was magnifying... three women sat beside him while he was talking to his geeky (maybe, probably) boyfriend, a plump chap with eyeglasses... i couldn't stop thinking: ah... the solidarity of men... when in shortage of supply of women, men will find alternative avenues to compensate for women, men will find women in men... the idea that i might be a transphobe never occurred to me: but it did occur to me that women: for all their supposed glorification of acceptance would never allow men to be attracted to men who are: beyond merely the thespian gay-lord, *******... ally... this... "freak"... i fancied this man... i could omit all the stressed "imperfections"... but such a feminine-feline face... it really suited him... i wanted to kiss him... i was thinking... i'll tend to the "oysters" and all the tender bits and bites of being with him... andd do the butcher's work with a *******... problem solved... this skin-head middle-aged (i'm coming to middle age, or life expectancy, not the lottery of mortality, mind you) sat next to me and was sort of nudging me with a shadow missing in the full-glare of the lights of the tube... you fancy him? insinuations via body-language: yeah... i do... is it wrong? nope! check the women sitting next to him... do you fancy them? nope... me too... of the three or four women sitting next to this trans-****** specimen... none had a lovelier face... mutations just... "happen"... the eureka-oops moments... i could seriously forget about the shared dimensions of large hands twice as big as that of a geisha, same with the feet... i could forget the baritone voice... i really fancied this boy... in a way that gay-lords just make it difficult having mingled with actors too much and not retaining an aura of: suspense and: something in me is frigid, alien... i shouldn't but... hell... i really should! i will! benevolent London that is... he was prettier than all the women i saw that day... like my grandfather once said: there are no ugly women... there are only abandoned... if not abandoned then neglected women... to think that women could ever be neglected: says as much about neglected men... men will find alternative avenues to women when the women self-exfoliate in their "privilege" of: first-come-first-served-and-thus-the-only-served menu... **** that! but what was special about this trans-****** specimen? it reminded me of the time i fancied Brian Molko, still do... in a non-gay sort of way... in a Plato the Plumber there's a blocked toilet of reincarnation afloat... it was actually, sort-of, actually-sort-of-funny watching the women on the same carriage trying to read my reaction... for once a man was more attractive than a woman to me! wow! being accused of trans-phobia... in London? well... only if you can't pull it off! it's like saying: coulrophobia! fear of clowns! with the clowns being without make-up? conflating the Apex Twin gargoyle from Window-Licker?! yeah... scary ****! the grin that's the length of the equator... i couldn't be attracted to a standard homosexual... Thespian leeching or intellectually pleasing akin to a Douglas Murray... or body-building blah blah... but this trans-****** specimen? that's an affront to a woman... all women... a man can have a prettier face to a woman's if... a man deems the exampled woman to be nothing more than akin to a lineage of... never arrived at cosmopolitanism... beetroot countryside proud... all red and irritated... i fancied this one... i was one step away from askig him: can i have your number? again, to reiterate: i didn't mind the deep voice... i didn't mind the size of hands that could match mine or the size of feet that could match mine... i was... infatuated with the magic dust of PIXIES! maybe that's what i learned from going to the brothel... but if you're going to play the trans-****** game... can you please avoid the mishandling of the Hippocratic oath... so little is actually necessary to accomplish a ****-heterosexual confusion-attraction that leaves women feeling inadequate: you, wouldn't even want to begin to believe! i'm now currently thinking of that film: the Odd Couple... Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison and Jack Lemmon as Felix Unger... Felix being the male-feminine counterpart of the feminine-man slob child pampered to: or however this quadratic works... i wouldn't be doing the cleaning and the cooking out of a feminine dignity to avoid doing the hard work of society's demands... no... i'd be perfecting my cooking to match up to the sort of food available upon heading out to a restaurant, i.e. not eating out... i've seen some car-crashes of trans-****** attempts... but this one stuck out for me because i started to think along the lines of: who needs women if men can appear prettier than women?! i'll just close my eyes when hand meets hand... it's a sickly sweet sensation but i could stomach it: if the conversation was kept to a satisfying lubrication: and it wouldn't be even remotely associated to the feminist-gay "commonwealth"... alliance... i don't need homosexuals to tell me XY&Z... i'm actually grooving this trans-****** trend: if spotting the exacting specimen to curtail all the wannabes... if there's an authentic Brian Molko specimen walking around... wow! reimagining being *** starved on the Western Front... a few guys with more artistic inclinations... rather than the rough sea-faring roughage of **** on the spot job done become involved... prettier faces than those of women... i could: no! i would succumb! it's just the terror in the eyes and on the faces of women... hey presto! a stick has two ends! freeze eggs... follow a career... demand a car a mortgage blah blah... my my... what a curiosity this trans-****** worked up to a perfection specimen of disphoria awoke in me... good enough cushioning blanket of sleeping with enough prostitutes... now i really want to sleep with a man... which is not gay... i'm bored of prostitutes... they're like any other woman: you pay them... yet they still complain as if you haven't paid them when not getting a hard-on because of (x) tiredness, (**) distraction, (***) life... per se... whatever... but those female faces... i pretended to be snoozing... they knew i knew... i kept an itch of a blink at this specimen... woman: ANGRY... no... actually... not angry... woman... what the **** is going on? of the times i went to a gay club and didn't pick up a Francis Bacon i wondered: did i drink enough? homosexual lust and all that same-for-same feminine-pro erotica of the jealous stone-rub-stone-offensive... the trans-****** "confusion" is a bright light... if done properly... done... naturally... i'm mesmerised... without... obviously... without... people succumbing to the breaking of the Hippocratic-oath... obviously... i despise the gay-pride movement... at least the authentic trans-sexuality movement is subtle... it's philosophically laden with a curiosity of more lips and less **** stressing fist-*******... this morphing of the pareidolia toward: seeing a female in a man's face... or seeing a man in a woman's face... hardly gender dysphoria... *****-utopia and... just as children look alike, regardless of ***... so do old people... also regardless of ***... but to achieve a heterosexual attraction in the realm of trans-genderism? it can't be forced... it has to happen ha-ha-naturally! i'm laughing at myself... only briefly... i'm more inclined to see the female in a man without seeing the homosexual... because homosexuality is like that quote from... no... not Human Traffic... about being gay and eating *****... how... eating ***** is not for real men... while ******* **** is all All Spice Alles Mensch... whatever... the gays are too proud might as well look out for the shy, proper, proper shy... trans-sexuals without any anti-Hippocratic-Oath mishandling(s)... the women become jittery thus...

i should have come home and reflected on spending
the past several hours on a shift
in Bishop's Park, overlooking Putney Bridge
watching the tide of Thames' recede back into the great
mouth before mingling with the salty waters
of the North Sea...
     all loved-up with the cold the dark and the wind
putting on some Woljiech Kilar soundtrack music
from Dracula - love remembered...
well... i was in the mood for something like that:
i put the track on... nope... can't feel it...
i'm tired, i'm cold i need to put on something to groove
to... we ain't going out like that - Cypress Hill...
tiredness swells the imitation pigeon-strut
in my head... bouncy-Billy will also ask for a chance
to express himself...
    the joke ran with Martin's team (Chelsea)
losing for the first time since 2006 to Fulham...
         the police officers were in a good number...
they even brought their horses...
two stood across from us when the final whistle was
blown... one of them started "laughing": if that's
what horses do, i.e. laugh...
no onomatopoeia here: hey Martin! even the horses
are laughing that Fulham beat Chelsea in the most
local derby of London...
    Craven Cottage is what? a mile at max two from
Stamford Bridge...
          one can only love the ever infuriated Martin...
but still the Thames receding...
   at first glace i might have stretched across
the balustrade and probably touched the surface of
the water... by the end of the shift when the river-bed
started to be exposed i started to wonder:
all that volume and now apparent air where once
there was water...
  no river in the world akin to the Thames...
tide in and tide out... at Westminster it's a river
that rid itself of the kettle and is nonetheless standstill
and boiling - during the day...
while eating a chicken wrap of torsos and tortillas
talking to a Norwegian who came over to watch
the football for the week...
last time he was here in the 1980s... have things changed?
the oyster one-touch travel card...
sure... it has just become a little bit more expensive:
but nothing has changed that much...
but during the night, and if its windy... well: clearly
there's a flow... a tide in or a tide out...
by the time i got to Goodmayes i walked past the brothel:
thank god i have nothing more to prove
thank god i have satiated my base needs and that's that...
what am i looking for? a compliment to a pharma-knock-out
of generic painkillers in the form of a bottle
of whiskey...
    too tired to **** not tired enough to think:
maybe i could fall in love again...
   fall in love... fall in love: but... ugh...
               fall in love and not pamper a woman's needs
with all those basic "tattoos" of courtship...
i might as well ask any future father-in-law:
so... where's my cow, my wedding dowry?
                     where's the pick-me-up to work with?
well if manna from heaven will not drop into my lap...
i hardly think... who the hell needs a car in London?
given the oncoming ULEZ restrictions?
bicycle, underground and the trains, plenty of buses...

today i was sent the most odd message from a coworker
who i am supposed to do a shift at the ice rink
on Sunday...
i was rather surprised - a "box" i never thought i would
unbox (as it were)...
i'll be honest... she's damaged - seriously damaged:
i'm on the "top" of the pile of damaged goods...
a mythological schizoid - ageing - each year turns
out easier as the madness spreads around me:
madness or the crushing mundaneness -
mundaneness or mediocrity -
    in a democracy it's all and the same: in the grey yolk
of bureaucracy -
         pushing letters through keyholes that leave
no door open: unless playing the "system" like
a criminal or a mummy with five different shades
of children from five different fathers...

                       the trouble with Russian girls is that...
they don't like a boy who appreciates music by Placebo...
huge disagreement... her take on Nancy Boy was
rigid and could never be biding: no appreciation of the music
for you... well... that be that...

this girl is hurt... i am hurt: everyone's hurt...
but i still find reasons to find silly happiness in cooking
cleaning, general groundwork labour of changing
the garden - some carpentry: cycling...
keeping up appearances of a well-kept diet
and perfumery of all sorts... at least dressing like
my idol Karl Lagerfeld... like an animal wears its fur...

she even changed her name to Frankie -
Frankie... i.e. is that Franklin, Frank?
no... it's actually Francesca...
the running joke with another girl i work with
runs along the line:
wouldn't that be something, to put on your CV
if you managed to convert her?
convert? or reconvert?
after all she has managed to produce offspring...
god knows why she's not in contact with her daughter...
but it's not like she was always a lesbian...
forced lesbian... it's not something a priori:
it's a posteriori...
after the facts that include: her biological father
beating her biological mum...
her biological mum abandoning her and her siblings
to escape with her dear life...
    how her step-father is like her biological father
but then the problem arises: the mother is unhinged
and now her step-father is facing splitting up with her
mother... of all the siblings she's the only one
keeping contact with her mother...
the other siblings, at least one... is ******* up to
her biological father who was: the greatest intersexual
boxer of the domestic environment to have ever lived
(in her eyes at least, i bet Tina Turner could compensate
such allowances of vanity)...

she used to be a man's woman once...
but now she switched... ******* without all
the Hippocratic misdeeds of the modern, current, narrative,
cutting off ******* and other genitals,
hormonal treatments... it's almost as if Joseph Mengele
died in body but his spirit lived on...
it's like a never-ending Auschwitz or at least
encryptions of mad-scientists for thirst of knowledge
have continued on a side-note of eugenics...
but at least with the closure of the 20th century
there was safe ******* experiments undertaken
by individuals without any authority of government:
the boys would grow their hair long and put
on eyeliner...
    perhaps even use girly perfumes or wear
dresses, nail-polish... hell... even sniff ******* or wear
them... but not with medical authority creating
irreversible ****** changes...
the girls would put on more weight or work out
and pretend to be East Germany's Olympians...
cut their hair short... who came the Pixie girls...
get tattoos wear signets: those bulky rings worth not
a gram of gold but their own worth of bulk...
    and like Francesca get an undercut with a Mohawk...
change their tone of voice... defence defence defence...
and become suddenly less and less agreeable...
still retaining a feminine smile and the odd feminine giggle
that could be unearthed...
or like with her text...
'hey... i want to go ice-skating after our shift...
do you think you'd be up for it?'
sure... although i only ice-skated twice in my life...
a long time ago, 13? i fell every single time...
i looked like someone who escaped from having
suffered from Polio...
i'll still look like someone who suffered from childhood
Polio akin to Israel Vibration's
Wiss", "Apple Gabriel", "Skelly"
      or Ian "Lane" Drury...
                                    instead i sent her a text replying:
sure... but i'll look like a spider equipped with
roller blades... i'll need to bring a casual set of trousers
just in case i fall and rip my work trousers...
'ha ha ha ha(insert crying with laughter emoticons)...'

oh sure... it's not a date... i'm not just going on a date...
we're not going for dinner...
i'm going ice-skating with a lesbian...
a butch-lesbian a hiding woman...
tattoos six-pack and muscle...
no wonder: only hours prior i was admiring
a would-be Brian Molko on the tube...
        
she followed up with a text of yet more defence:
but i'm skint - it will cost £10.50 for an hour
and a bit...
      we'll see i reply... as if she was implying:
if we can't get in for free... would you be willing
to pay?
i didn't reply with agreement to paying for...
then again: i'm not thinking about ***,
or homosexual conversion therapy...
i just don't remember when a girl last asked me to
go on a date with her... after all:
isn't a girl asking a boy to go ice skating with her
sort of asking a boy to go on a date?
she said she was quiet adapted to ice skating:
she owns a pair (of ice skates)... and i'll be the hilarious
polio walker / spider strapped with roller blades
trying to swim in quicksand...
mind you... i'm trying to rid myself of the past two
interactions in the brothel... terrible ***...
that one with the madam where i was limp...
the fate of the Sabine men gripped me...
i won't deny it...
second time... she calls herself my favourite:
she isn't... she's deluded... to the amazement of the other
girls i like to **** in the brothel...
i only extended my per usual 30min stay
by clocking up an extra 30min because i was so close
to climaxing from a *******: knock knock on the door...
time's up... no... not this time...
i'm going to finish... ergo...
but even she has paved her way onto a path of too much
physical augmentation...
if the **** don't come first... then the duck quack lips
reveal themselves first... she's an aging *******
and she has never done anything in terms of work
prior... no laundry no till service...
pregnant aged 14 and in the profession aged 16...
this is the murk and the sully of the gallows
of everyone: once, former, youthful idealism of love...
trotting a horse with broken legs like
waking up into birth by a man sitting in akimbo
for too long... standing up with numbed legs...
moving awkwardly...

obviously i was going to be robbed of Khadra and Mona...
Mona became stupid for getting pregnant
with a customer... hmm... i wonder who...
last time i saw her i teased her without a ******
and this massive fright gripped her face
because i was only teasing and she thought i was
a premature ejaculator... clearly a ****** was subsequently
used and the deposit in it: **** knows...
she should know... i haven't seen her since...

i think i'll text Francesca (Frankie) and tell her...
bring your skates girl... if we can't get in for free i'll
pay for the two of us...
only two shifts prior she was insinuating about
going for a pint: i just replied: i would...
but i had to help my father write the fortnightly
invoice and send it in...
like tomorrow... tomorrow i'll have to help my mother
with the taxes and VAT...
they're getting a new accountant and she lied
about doing her taxes on a spreadsheet...
**** me... i probably used Microsoft Excel twice...
twice, properly... but since i only used it twice...
i'm a bit rusty... so much worth of secondary school
education or the university...
   they taught us the bare minimum of real-world
life-long tools of the onslaught of technology -
   hammer and scythe i can use to count heads...
oh well: there's bound to be some crash-course for dummies
on the internet...

i waited until 9pm for the three of us to sit down to
eat some fajitas...
i overdid it using Kashmiri chilly powder
and three fresh chillies in making the pineapple salsa...
but the hotness neutralised itself with the addition
of the tomato salsa i made... and the guacamole...
the sour cream and obviously cheese, esp. cheddar
neutralises all possible excess spices...
we ate, chatted... one big ******* family,
me, father and mother and my "brother" and "sister"...
well... at least the cats meow and don't bark...
oddly enough: i'm happy... mediocre sort of:
that scene from Hellraiser: Inferno...
were the protagonist - a corrupt police officer -
is forced into a nightmare of having to relive his
eternity in his childhood's bedroom...
living with his parents...
shouldn't the horror be... your parents getting divorced?
i don't know why mine are still together...
they must be freaks... i must be a mutant:
well... born only two weeks after Chernobyl:
no riddles, only clues...
     i keep the conversation going...
i help around the house...
  
                        Frankie dealt me two nuggets of hashish
in the past 4 months... once i was desperate
when the hashish ran out so she gave me the number
of a marijuana dealer: great green all the way from
America... i only used the service once...
maybe that's me being bulletproof...
i'm cutting down on drinking and i will never return
to smoking marijuana to achieve a Buddha-esque glow
meditating while high and hungry...
weighing in at 78kg... it's a bit of a yoyo with me these
days... from 99kg through to 103kg...
but then... i pinch myself: i summon the ***** to pinch
back... hmm! no man-****... so i could try out for
some amateur rugby matches...

a butch lesbian asking a boy for a date to go
ice skating... i feel... truly terrible for all the conventional women...
i would have offered a cinema date...
she beat me to the better sort of entertainment...
she said: let's go ice skating...
i would have retorted: i do own two bicycles...
how about we go cycling in the night...
round and round Raphael's Park...
round and round... and if we're lucky...
and if the winter air aligns itself with some idiot
setting off fireworks... we can get snippets of whiffs
of imitation autumn... as if the leaves of the trees
have fallen in the dry crisp air and someone
set them alight and there's no rot and knee-deep
digging of plush-decay exfoliating a sickness
in the air... how's that?

i'll send her the text... hell... i'll pay for her...
i'm not interested in ***...
she might be a butch-lesbian trying to hide her
femininity... but she still smiles like a woman...

oh sure... i remember the last conventional:
heterosexual date i was on...
we met in a sweaty night-club... if we kissed we kissed:
i don't remember... she gave me her phone-number
i gave her mine... i was in the company of
about 3 girls who i met elsewhere, otherwise:
also randomly...
at least one made something of her life...
she ****** off to Norway - totally off-the-grid...
by now probably breeding huskies for sleighs...

the next time we met... i bought two bottles of wine...
the "date"? a job interview... we talked...
subsequently we went to a pub while i had a pint...
she was feeling claustrophobic...
i was the alcoholic and she became the **** of boredom...
she excused herself: some prior engagement
with her girlfriends... i guess she thought she got away...
i way happy to get away by same mechanisation
of oppositional psychology...
all this talk within the confines of carpe diem that
centred upon: what do you / what's you living
should i think about life insurance - will we live to be 70
years old?
well... that's the cherry on top with Francesca...
you want to go ice-skating? sure...
you want to go cycling with me in the night?
sure... life insurance / what do you for a living?
how much do you earn?
             can we live a little outside a prison within a prison?!

so much for Dawid Bovie's idea of the androgynous man:
if i'm to be surrounded by "butch" lesbian
and prostitutes: that's my lot then...
i'm not going to succumb to the CV-project-veritas
in-vitro infanticide females with CHOICE
like... my spunking into a bucket and calling it:
falling asleep with the sound of rain
trickling trickling on a metallic roof...
in the night when the horrors come and horrors
claim all the little details of frailty
of mortality...

                  for every tear-jerking sympathy for
a Romeo there's the mantis of
   a Judith kissing the decapitated head of
                                                             Holofernes:
**** it... the prostitutes i truly loved ******* are either:
pregnant or on "holiday"...
i passed the brothel only two nights ago...
i spotted a man walking out from the door...
he froze like a doe in the headlights and didn't move
until i turned my head and kept walking...
i was about to blast out with wind and voice:
no shame in having to share women
we will never impregnate!
start thinking like a woman, dear man...
think on ground of evolutionary bias...
for every women there's this boast of:
50% of men reproduced successfully...
while all the whole lot of them the 100% of train-wrecks
and Piccadilly butcher's antics with the flab
have... their greatest success story to ever live...
i could be worse off... than right now...
i could have married an ugly woman:
by definition: if a most feminine man
grows his hair long and applies some slapstick
makeover creases of eyeliner...
i can forgive him his match-for-match size
of hands... height... size of shoe...
but never an ugly woman... UGLY...
that goes beyond mere the physical-glass...
i'm talking: character... there's no prime-ego
LEGO building block... no architect's corner stone...
there's nothing to work with...
just everything to work around...
to avoid...
                    
    if: for ****'s sake... i'm not planning: i'm providing
the revenue... i want to go ice-skating!
she doesn't have any money? i have "too much"...
i don't: but for the worth of life in life that's only
to supposed to span a month's worth of living it...
hell: i have no better idea to pass the time...

at one point i found out that Francesca has some Irish
roots... you're Aye-Reesh?!
              really? never would have conjured up
a sharing of ******* on a leprechaun...
**** it for good luck... like circumcision:
that's apparently Hebrew for: good luck...
with the addition of: ensuring your bride to be
be donning a niqab and all those "other"...
culturally sensitive, exclusive terms of
cultural-dis-appropriation: or whatever the **** is
coming out of H'America...
             once upon a time when that cultural export
was relevant: these days: nothing new to be
found... except the abandoned moon...

well... i sent the text... sure... i'll pay for the ice-skating...
but you have to promise me to go cycling
with me during the warmer months
with me... don't worry about having a bicycle...
you can have my mountain-bicycle
i use for the winter months
while i'll get on my summer month
road-bicycle...
we'll head toward Thurrock...
and elsewhere that's Essex friendly
and far away from London outer-suburbia...
fresh... fresh...
Jean Claude van Dame...
                       Fresh: that's her idea of working out
before the shift... and then going ice-skating...
FooR x Majestic x Dread MC...

                oh well... life in Loon-downs...
or is that: no apples... i'm sure there are no apples...
if she takes the bait...
i.e. i pay for both of us going ice-skating tomorrow...
she better go cycling with me during the
summer months...
she says no to ice-skating tomorrow
i'll become Trojan in my own defense...
if she wants to be all ******* lesbian defensive...
i can be defensive too...
i'll arm myself with enough brothel visits to erase:
first... comes... oh my grandmother disappointed
me... i could have been there for my
grandfather stabbing himself in the leg
while entering the state of AGONIA...

                    i could have been there: she? trying to protect
me against the advent of mortality?
or her... biting my grandfather's alcoholism she
induced by being a terrible woman?
his last pleasures?
crossword puzzles... cycling, fishing,
rekindling with the day-tripper postcard sender
vouch! you're the simulation tourist with
his... grand... chill... no... not -dren...
his... sole and only grand-child... i.e. me...
him buying me the books i read over the summer holidays...

women are so ape so cruel...
i stopped believing in what's idealistic and rare before
me: which i can't replicate...
i'm happy being freed from:
i don't earn the sort of money that the state
demands taxing me... weird? no!
i don't earn enough to be taxed!
weird... i'm sort of pretending to be a jellyfish
afloat... simulating gravity:
gravity is always a simulation in the medium
of water...
                by air contra vacuum:
the mountain breathes in winter a cascade of
frigid snow slides down...
a Michael Schumacher goes skiing...
****** races cars at 200kmh... one loose turn and twist:
cranium like an opening of a watermelon...
jellyfish fighting for life dead-locked style
in a sick-bed while people nearest to him
think about magic-spells: how best to live without
him: how best to milk the cow with *****
instead of milk... hmm hmm hmm...

if she wants to go on a date with me to go ice-skating...
and i'm supposed to be paying for it...
she better be readied to go cycling with me
during the summer months...
if that's not going to happen:
she shouldn't have suggested
going ice-skating in the first place, for ****'s sake...
like: anything by Bricktop in ****** is
Shakespeare to me... perhaps even more...
living with the times...

                                oh well some well: Samuel!
Samuel: you're not Samantha... learn to become
a transvestite first... before we employ the ****
Hippocrates to mutilate you, o.k. darling?
    learn to grow your hair long...
learn to put on make-up... learn to wear dresses...
learn to sniff female underwear...
Samuel! Samuel! you're not Samantha (yet)!
we will not give you up to the Joseph "Hip-replacing-******"
Mengele: shy away from everything American
in the realm of: worth being culturally exported
and influencing foreign cultures: esp.
in the basin of the origins of the English ZZZUNGE...
that's England...
                  
HIPS FOR KNEES!
                    America: beacon, former: beacon of the world
to come... came one Cain for every second cannibal
no Satan was spawned: at least that's Iranian paranoia
covered: converted, shut the doors on Tehran...
bigger whoops happened when...
Garry Glitter became pop once more
with the release of the Joker movie
and that mad dance scene...
on the 132 steps where Shakespeare Avenue
meets Anderson Avenue...

    i will never, ever... visit... anything... remotely...
resembling... or being curated as being:
North America... i've had too much north american
cultural anemia...
             prior to words not being so much politcal
as agent orange doing all the "talking"...
                                  
  tam tam tam dam dam dam... ditto... do no more than
the necessary "evil": just, bass: on the base
on insinuation;
hell... if the afro-cosmopolitan is the new "cool",
the new "groove"...
let's just keep it... marred: in murk: in murky.

small hour memories
of childhood corridors
from witches in the rafters
to lovers, spied in keyholes,
full of grief and laughter

it is a strange practice, learning to understand someone
it begins with a rough sketch of 'the way they feel about
their parents' or 'what happened to their siblings'
and it progresses on with a Myers Briggs evaluation
sometimes taking their mental pulse in different subjects
marking what they care about and what they don't
enscribing the single sentence of their
self-worth, their desire, and their motivations
on whatever it is that binds the two of you together,
and growing with them and learning the way in which they grow
you know their crystal lattice and you know how it forms
a molecular structure in fractals, in fractals, in fractals
that builds and changes but is always quite the same,

I know what makes you laugh,
I know how to make you cry,
I have learned you and I know
which keyholes can be pressed, slid into, or clicked
I know of all your crevices and your breakages
and I know how to fix them or how to
drive a wedge so deep inside you that you splinter
I can map when your breath is short and I can chart
your secrets on the walls of my heart, kept there
like a case-file in a robbery- you have stolen
me, my very existence,
and there is an arrow and a pin and lines drawn
to every single bit of who you are
I have learned you, I have measured you,
you have been weighed and found wanting
and I know what it is you are wanting in the depths of your being
but the finding of these things is difficult and rocky and awkward
for you have taken what it is that is me and you have
patterned it over the immense and layered texture of you
breaking and filling holes, pouring into a mold
and I am invested, now, for I am made for you,
but there is no turning back and we must go on from here
I learn and change from the people around me
but first I must learn you.

It is a strange practice, learning to understand someone,
but once I understand you, then
now, now we can begin.

When my grandfather passed away, my brothers and I held my dad with slanted eyebrows and stiff, silent upper lips. Because we are young and foolish and still learning. Because we’d never really had to do the holding before and, as far as we knew, this is how men mourn.

We dusted antique left-behinds with delicate, moth-wing hands that fluttered here and there and never stopped trembling -- dead giveaways that within the corridors of our arms our heartbeats went stampeding, arrhythmic. We couldn’t quite bend them into the proper shape for prayer, so instead we ran them, with touch somewhere between float and feel, along every ashtray and age-stained picture album. In that moment I think we each wished that memory read like braille, but no one ever said as much. Because this is how men mourn.

We honored our patriarch with whiskey, hidden away for what must have been twice my age, between the carved out pages of old stacked books.
We drank like secrets. His portrait played witness.

We promised between our teeth with tinged lips tight, keeping words in that might otherwise crumble us like great ancient empires.

We singed and smoldered in a burn that coated our throats, quelling a choke that kept climbing its way up from a chest that never quite stayed sunk. Boys grow up loving the clinking twist of unlocking deadbolts but men peek through keyholes. Because this is how men mourn. Silent and straight with head only slightly slanted.

But when my father betrayed his rigidity with words that clicked clean like unfastening locks, we traded this stale air in for wind laced with the electric taste of thunderstorms. We forgot how men mourn.

When my grandfather passed away, my brothers and I held my dad with lightning behind bleared eyes. Because we are young and foolish and still learning. Because we have umpteen days left to dress in bittersweet vestiges and, as far as we know, this is how men live on.

I am love's Savant
Of perilous divining;
No simpering hierophant,
Of the desperately climbing.

For love arrives naked,
Sans cloak or cloche,
While love's finger beckons,
For me to come close.

I'm privy to his prophecy;
To the keyholes I tiptoe,
Where I see the aristocracy-
In flagrante delicto.

As his scribe, I'm resigned
To write impassioned words;
Still, desires will not rewind-
Even though they be absurd.

dead soldiers swing from the tree branches behind my house
and i can hear crevices of ice being formed on the lakefront
as the ice cracks in the agonizing cackle and slow mournful croon of a dying animal or a small child

romance me around the tables and kiss me between the bars
hide all the ******* in the keyholes and don't let me forget this keycard

i told you, officer
she went to get ice for some drinks and when i woke up she wasn't here

I am rain streaked windows that cake with dirt, showing time veins from beneath itself, in rivulets on it's surface.

I am screaming. I am screaming. I have no voice louder than the ones in my head.

I am a stutter step tap dance down long streets that I would like to walk again because I think, but don’t know for sure, that they will lead me home.

I am dancing. I am dancing. I keep time to the rain, like millions of heartbeats on the tin roof, ticking away the days until I hang in the air.

And then we find the little cracks that let light through the dark parts of who we are and we press our mouths to them and drink the light like air. We are drowned sailors who believed what the sirens promised. We believed we could drink enough light in, to make us holy.

She is keyholes to peek through at the woman *******. My sight is the skeleton key that will open new worlds when I see that she can be more beautiful when she is uncovered. And more beautiful for not being afraid to be uncovered, because she doesn’t know I am watching. But I am. And she is more beautiful for not knowing.

And her face is a tear streaked looking glass, with make up showing the time lines from beneath the lies on it’s surface.

She is crying. She is crying. I have no way to calm her anymore.

Then is the promise of midnight love making and forever kisses that burn onto your soul and will never go away. And some will cover themselves like a tattooed man on a carnival pier, right between the fire eater and the fortune teller. There will not be room left for true kisses soon and no way to make room for them.

He is coloring book scribbles that stray from the lines with bad choices and noble intentions, autographed on it’s surface.

He is lonely. He is lonely. I have no way to teach him to trust.

Then the white sheets. Bleached and boiled in copper pots. Starched and straight and folded. She is the pillow case at the bottom of a constantly growing pile of untouched linens. And save for the closets occasional open and close, there is no light.

The pile dwindles, top down, but those at the bottom will never make it on to the bed, it seems. Just locked away in the linen closet. White and pure. And unseen. But the bottom side is darkened and settled in dust. And afraid.

And she is thread barren, white cotton that wishes to be held to the sun and seen through for all of it’s darkest stains.

She is trapped. She is trapped. And I lay my head on sheet less mattresses unable to make her my own.

I thought you should know. I thought you should know.

I am a magnet for surrendered breath and wasted youth. I am open arms that wrap you in and hold you as fanciful clothes to shield my nakedness. I am whispers of comfort that nuzzle your fears that are really just harpsichord bleats to silence my own.

I thought you should know that I am lying. I am lying.
But never about my intentions.
Just about what they become.

plot out distances between freckles
and count the amount of hairs;
in a beauteous analysis
a cold witnessing
of)a featured lifeless gaze
projected onto windows
refracted in time with the pounding
from lost soulless ghouls
in a dank puddled basement
as we stare through keyholes

the length of life waits to rescind
to wash up on the shoreline
anew, once refreshed
with Angina on

wading in cyclic waves
in deposits of reveries
stale orangeade sonatas
and dull area tirades


the purpose
economized

every axiom
americanized

and as your atoms become depersonalized
tension is materialized, in ornate ivory
shattered brass instruments rusted by
novels written to god
in a
fractured light
and range

cramped in a curtailed distance
a brickwall deadend universe
gnashing with frustration
****** yawns of futility

closed viaducts
and vacant lots
deafened eyes, grey
glimmering in retort
to their own expression


blind sight was squandered by the snapback, of all the
strings of the orchestra as they were simultaneously snipped
by sharp prying eyes, listening to the mixing of paint
to smell the music, its arms limp, vivid
wishing to pull you back (in hindsight)
with dreaded, deadened incantations
a dithyrambic liturgy to the drunken thoughtless night
of slurred litanies and unappeasable, irascible deities
lonely and immaculate, all-powerless and deft
in irksome quarrels and arguments
glossed over by the fine print of another
exalting the vainglorious self-inscribed paragons
and revelling every inadmissible mistake

gazing past to a solo star
dumbstruck and dead
from an evaluation
and dehydration

dying to know
forget it.

She has had enough
Of looking through the keyholes
of her own apologies
observing  silently
like the tiniest of dust particles
that nobody truly sees
She has had quite enough
of being that shadow that lurks within her own soul
She is sick and tired of the flag of "sorry"
Flapping high above the breeze while she is stuck
down below
just waiting as the world passes by
She has had it,
so sick of hiding within that small silent room
as the colors fly in whirls outside the tiny window
gracing the touch of her fingers
as the flutter of butterfly wings
She is ready to break down those walls
with the one sledgehammer
that she now
discovers is in the room
Rusty, standing up
In the corner
Unrecognizable but for the cloak of dust.

Dust and rust aside somehow,
she can feel it and it is unstoppable
pushing back the cobwebs in that prison cell
that she herself created
She is ready to unfurl
Fly out into the light
The horizons of her world
are already exploding
Shards of glass fly from it…
from where she's not sure
The walls pushed back through an invisible force
that simply was there
all along.
Here, feel that dance of multi-colored
Light
Coming in with each breath
As the heart and soul expand
Now there is no way
but up and out.
Timid hands open the door a crack
And like a magnetic force
She is almost ****** through
The time tunnel of freedom
Almost….
Like the tiniest of snails slides back into the
comforting shell
But then she wields it
taking charge.
Pride is on the shelf
and courage large
Sledgehammer roars through the air
and smashed walls
lead to freedom -
not slippery as the black ice she once tripped on
but as smooth and graceful as the stride
of a delicate wing
as it licks the sky
in her rising.

lost in a strange world
  only sense we can find
Is in peering through the keyholes
Of locked doors
we bang our fists
and spread the spark
hoping its sent down wind
setting smoke to the answers within
were drawnto the fire
like moths to a flame
Unwilling to be tamed
by the safety belt of the world
smoke seeps from the lock
and we inhale deep
ravenous for
the taste of something
real
the burn we feel
goes undetected
among the drowning men
In this shallow pool
Of lukewarm genuinity
and over-chlorinated sincerity
but we breath the fumes in
with a whole new strength
we break down the door
unleash the deamons
begging for more
than this
unless
we become one
With the fears,
we become none
so we rise with the deamons
and we rise up
above the conscience
dont give a ****
because we never could fit
Within the boundaries
Of a newborn dying man
these unatainable boundaries
never could never will never can

beads of salt and sweat edge
the Cuban sandwich zest from
the tip of my tongue
flavors of my own theme song
echo in my throat

I'm merry ******* footfalls
on hot concrete snares
and the groans swinging
between my thighs take lead
singing cat whistles
along Main Street

snakes will be snakes
and tight cotton shirts
is asking for venom vial shots

don't worry though
those are my brother's loosened trousers
I'm a sweet gardener
I hold doors open
and voted for Hillary
I'm blinding reflection
standing over the hill

but don't shake my thoughts
with your pepper singed howls
cleaning you up messes my stride
dress like a lady and
monsters look for prettier things

oil stains dripping through
the elbows of my shirt
writes working man sonnets
across noir alley doorways
named Touch But Don't Tell

keep quite and use the suggestion box
and don't blame me for chromosomes
genetic randomness isn't my fault
biochemical cocktails don't drown babies
you just fill your bathtub with them

why do you need life jackets
to fill my shirts
empty your oil can and get a promotion
so you can buy your own

I'm tattered sheets stuffed
over hotel window rails
you're a frail damsel selling dreams
I won't buy, I peep keyholes
save digital copies and call the cops
stop screaming and let me save you

your fingers compress a sweaty glock
rioting my stomach
your tones too ******* loud
remember I loaded the bullets
so at least credit me the shot

beads of blood and sweat
whisper cat o' nines tails
see I'm your martyr
but only on favor street.

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

Swarming in the incense, this part  of “The City”
looked like a Turkish bath, and the books, old & cold,
shivered in trays as they awaited their faux leather,
While a wet winter wind whistled in the keyholes.

By the fallen, balmy cloud the fruits of cactus
lay in a red cart like porcupines colored, tired
of being on guard all the time. Their hues stirred
the hunger of the centenary walls, so their fissures
oozed and their latter-day hieroglyphs began
to crumble.
(c) LazharBouazzi

I talked with you on the phone the other day.
You were telling me how you visited the zoo;
spent an afternoon watching the zebra graze
and the lions lazily roar at civilians with digital cameras.

I talked with you on the phone the other day.
You were visiting the zoo, crying on the phone—
How can they keep them in cages
Locked away as if they don't feel like we do
You forget
there are people in cages without keyholes
there are blistered eyeballs scanning a lightless horizon for a lock pick or a clothespin
that may allow them to puzzle their way into the gears
There are people who die searching

I talked with you on the phone the other day.
We chit-chatted about sunbeams and lawnmowers.
We were happy, careless.
There are no cages here.

Only keys.

as i travel across strange plains
along bumpy roads
bouncing on my seat
as i look past my window
focused through the maze of
branches ... through tiny keyholes to paradise
searching for creature iv only seen through glass walls
even with reflex i cant control
the accidental blink of an eye
could rob me of treasures
i cold carry till i die
yet again luck fails me
yet again iv tried
then again i wont be gone
yet gone for long again
i will be back with sparkling hope
to search through the maze again
those tiny gateways to paradise
where creatures beyond those walls dwell in blinded bliss
happy as they are till an other traveler
same thought as mine sees past the ordinary
into that world that untwines

So I sew stitches around the crown made of fingers twisted like a tangled dandelion strangled garden worn as a closet to hide my crafted paper daft boxes that I keep my skeletons in because their keyholes keep appearing on my face,
If you destroyed like me you'd see that ashes are the outcome of a matchstick man,
I cannot rest my head yet on my pillows made of dead rabbits feet and fox tails until I store them in their little coffee can tin jars far under this mattress pad of nails,
Warm words in cold rooms subsumes the silent night screens projected over by my rising motion picture smoke breath that my eyes watch alone now at a distance starting from my lucky lucky steel dagger full sized sheet set and ending at an omen reflecting my separation anxieties coming from my lungs,
Yet loneliness is the only person neatly tucked between it other than my own broken battered body with a shiver and a quiver discretely manifesting,
And like white ghosts the stars watch me sleeping at night,
You can flog all my windows,
But I'll still be sleeping at night,
I'll miss all your wake up calls,
Every single one,
So I let the music play,
Because noise cancels noise inside an introverted fire starter

'Beautiful stalagmites and stalactites!' 'Clayton, this cave has breath!'

Do you feel the air?' 'The air movements are strong and prevent our death,

But they can extinguish the lamp.' To lead the way, he unrolled many feet

Of rope to mark their exit in case of being disoriented in this huge 'suite'.


They named the other one Queen's Chamber, because it was small.

It was a dim room, twenty feet high having a nice circular white wall.

After an amount of stooping, crawling, scooting, and squirming, while

Passing through damp trail ways over pits and breakdowns of the aisle,


Through tight keyholes, they reached a lake of water. Then, they have

Transported wood, to build a boat, and to explore the other part of the cave.

On the other side of the lake, they saw a room looking like a stone quarry.

After that, they recognized the finished stone house in its greatest glory.


They saw that the refreshments were served, consisting of tea, coffee,

And dressing, but the people weren't inside, yet. Surah took a toffee

And two of the numerous huge lamps hanging on the right cave's wall.

They heard a strong music and many loud voices coming from the ball.


' Imagine this, Clayton; we were bending, crawling to pass through

So many tight spaces in order to find that this cave is my sister's clue.'

'It's one single cave having two parts, which are separated by the lake.'

'Let's go home!' said Surah maliciously smiling. 'Anne is a real snake!'

(Of course, Queen Anne was not a snake. The old castle was built around the cave and those two chambers were used to protect the kings and the queens all over the time. The legend of the beast was used to protect the other entrance in the cave during many wars taking place along the time. )
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

They were floating back until they reached the shore of the other side.
She dropped two lamps in the water, and left the boat being in a hurry to hide.
They blocked the entrance of the passage, and their lamp started to tingle.
Clayton bumped a paddle against the wall to pass, but it sounded like a jingle.

They opened the metal door, and then they climbed up the tower‘s stairs
To get into the secret room. There, they saw two beds, a table, and three chairs.
On the table, there was a golden little spindle being full of golden thread.
'They use this gilded altar to pray for Jezebel', said Surah turning her head.

To be continued......(tomorrow)

The farmhouse
also awakens,
pine floorboards
and joists unsettled,
plaster walls rattled
by midnight voices.

In certain rooms,
the lace curtains
sift moonlight
with graceful fingers.

Shadows making their rounds
slink past doors and bedposts,
curl into unlocked keyholes,
uncoil time across the duvet.

Just outside, familiar silver trees
conduct an orchestra of illusions:
branches graze the metal roof,
tap tap tap on windowpanes.

It goes this way for hours,
sounds of a haunted choir.

When sleep comes
my dreams are like
balloons brushing
against razor wire.

if only we could see the eyes
of what is contained behind these doors
from the darkness
the scent of fear
seeps through the cracks and keyholes

if only we could feel the isolation
locked up behind these doors
no man can comprehend the fear
that is screaming to us for liberation

instead, we clutch onto ignorance
with our fists clenched
and with our eyes closed
we unknowingly fight the battle
for whichever side is winning

the innocent condemned
by the monsters with their power
if only we could see the misery
we are consuming
if only we could see the horror
we are allowing

Standing in the dark, locked up
Inside myself
Little dot of light I see while praying
Coming through my keyhole.
Seeing people just like me
Living life, walking, talking all dressed up.
Living dolls locked up in their selves looking for their key.




Shell ✨🐚

padlocks giftwrap

antiquated keyholes.

turn/turn/turn.

click.

the kernel of a

Russian Doll

crackles heady--

underfoot.