my paris begins with
those early days
as a conscious flaneur
i recall the couple
seated opposite me
on the metro
when i was still innocent
of its labyrinthine complexity
slim pretty white girl
clad head to toe in denim
smiling wistfully
while her muscular black beau
stared through me
with fathomless orbs
and one of them spoke
almost in a whisper
qu'est-ce-que t'en pense
and it dawned on me
yes the young parisienne
with the distant desirous eyes
was no less male than me

dismal movies
in the forum des halles
being screamed at in pigalle
and then howled at again
by some kind of madman
or vagrant who told me
to go to the bois de boulogne
to meet what he saw
as my destiny
menaced
by a sinister skinhead
for trying on tessa's
wide-brimmed hat
getting ****** in les halles
with sara
who'd just seen
dillon as rusty james
and was walking in a daze
sara again with jade
at the caveau
de la huchette jazz cellar

cash squandered
on a gold tootbrush
two tone shoes
from close by
to the place d'italie
portrait sketched
at the place du tertre
paperback books
by symbolist poets
but second hand volumes
by trakl and deleve
and a leather jacket
from the marche aux puces
porte de clignancourt
losing gary's address
scrawled on a page
of musset's confession
walking the length
and breadth of the rue st denis,
what an artist's paradise
(as juliette once wrote me).

Labyrinthine is my heart, a maze dizzying
with  your murmurous (though lovely) lilt my solitary atlas
along with furtive glances and scintillas of hope,
and dulcet kisses stolen not on a veranda,
for the fireflies and willows to witness,
but surreptitiously and sussorously
in the penumbra beneath,
kisses stubbornly efflorescent,
love sempiternal.

Old man, you surface seldom.
Then you come in with the tide's coming
When seas wash cold, foam-

Capped: white hair, white beard, far-flung,
A dragnet, rising, falling, as waves
Crest and trough. Miles long

Extend the radial sheaves
Of your spread hair, in which wrinkling skeins
Knotted, caught, survives

The old myth of orgins
Unimaginable. You float near
As kneeled ice-mountains

Of the north, to be steered clear
Of, not fathomed. All obscurity
Starts with a danger:

Your dangers are many. I
Cannot look much but your form suffers
Some strange injury

And seems to die: so vapors
Ravel to clearness on the dawn sea.
The muddy rumors

Of your burial move me
To half-believe: your reappearance
Proves rumors shallow,

For the archaic trenched lines
Of your grained face shed time in runnels:
Ages beat like rains

On the unbeaten channels
Of the ocean. Such sage humor and
Durance are whirlpools

To make away with the ground-
Work of the earth and the sky's ridgepole.
Waist down, you may wind

One labyrinthine tangle
To root deep among knuckles, shinbones,
Skulls. Inscrutable,

Below shoulders not once
Seen by any man who kept his head,
You defy questions;

You defy godhood.
I walk dry on your kingdom's border
Exiled to no good.

Your shelled bed I remember.
Father, this thick air is murderous.
I would breathe water.

I.
I felt it the first time I saw you. My heart stopped its incessant beating upon the sight of you walking down the busy city street, a little windswept and breathless with your cheeks flushed, hair messy and your lips slightly parted as if you were asking for a kiss and I wished I were the only one who could give it. It’s what gave me courage to talk to you. This was the time when I finally understood the likes of poets like Shakespeare, Debussy’s longing and the stuff of silly songs sung by the town drunks with their guitars and slurred perspectives. It was like flying. I was walking on air and floating in bewitched water. I saw it in the color of the crimson hue in the roses I bought you, that dress you wore, the color of your cheeks and the color of your lips when you leaned into whisper in my ear your vow of eight letters, the prospect of a future that no longer promised me loneliness. Each night I heard it when you were in my arms and the whole world decided to quiet down and stand still like a child halting the spin of a wildly spinning top. In the smallest moments when all that pervaded me was the scent of your hair, the hint of your smile, your warmth and the palms of your hands over my beating heart, I have never felt more contented. I have never known people could be happy and elated like this. For once in my life I think I could never tire of seeing someone, of wanting to become part of them, of knowing every flaw and every well-kept secret. In the half-shadows of the lazy afternoons we spent together and the sleepy mornings tangled up in sheets, I saw our dog, perhaps children and then 20 years of marriage.
II.
Perhaps once upon a time, a long long time ago I met it a few times and each with a different face. I saw it in the way a mother held her child as her most valuable possession, the warmth of affection and the smell of home on her skin when she embraced you, kissed you when you stumbled and picked you up when you fell. I saw it in a father’s pride, his secret admiration. I remembered my own mother and my own father and all my bravado left me. Once upon a time, I read it in my mother’s bruises like a map, the ones my father lovingly decorated her with in strikes, punches and eager beatings. I felt it every time she kept her bags unpacked and put away the bitter ****** aftermath of the underlying storms with a forced smile on her lips and the promise that everything would be okay, that I had just been dreaming. Even then I saw it in my father when he came home-- the twisted way he held her close and said his sorries, the way he treated her like a queen and tried his best to keep his promise. In the days he told me to be strong and in the days he really did try hard, I found it difficult to blame him—I could not place the hate I felt for him and why my fortifications threatened to dissipate and crumble. I never noticed this before but it was always present in the way my mother and father laid to rest their hopes and dreams, buried them in a lot of filthy graveyard soil when the wretched curse that was me took away all their aspirations and they selflessly sacrificed their whole young lives ahead of them full of travel and the irresistible seduction and sparkling lure of opportunity to work like dogs on their hands and knees so I could live my own fickle life of wasted hours and silly daydreams. Money did not grow on trees, darling and yet for every mistake you made, every useless rebellious decision that only resulted in heartbreak and derision their forgiveness knew no bounds and they threatened no abject beleaguering, no threat of desolation. By and by, you fail to see their infinite patience, the hope and the investment—the silent prayer for all good things and mighty rising sons and daughters.
III.
Again, one day, I saw a couple in the park holding hands, their faces lined with age that told their story with their depth and their number. I saw their narrations told, young buds and blooming then the bad days that came and the sad days that kept repeating. In their intertwined fingers and the slow steps on rocky beach, bathed in glowing sunset sunlight, the twilight of a remarkable 20 years or so and maybe one, two or twenty sons and daughters, I wondered if you and I would come around like that—battle through decades with our feelings unchanging. I thought about your face and the way you slept, and the first morning that I saw it and decided that yours was the one I wanted to wake up to everyday for the rest of my life. I wondered if you and I, darling, would come out strong and happy, still holding hands after the lagniappe of challenges, the labyrinthine years of madness. I decided I would not die with you in the manner of Romeo and Juliet, the drama of Shakespeare but I wanted to spend every waking moment that I could live and breathe on this desolate earth spending it with you or else thinking of you and going through it for you. Why would I waste our precious time with grand, suicidal gestures when I could just show you in little ways, every day until we grew old and grey together?
IV.
Then I forgot you were only temporarily mine, that I could not keep you. I lost the feeling. It only turned to rot in my hands and I only grew bitter. I forgot that butterflies in mason jars died, and so did the red roses, the bouquets of flowers. It was it how I felt when I saw you in the arms of another man, laughing and smiling. It was not how I felt when my heart threatened to burst and split, along with my knuckles and hanging picture frames now lying shattered on the floor. It was not how I felt when you left, said goodbye and closed the door. It was the hope I felt when I thought you would return but it was not the face I saw when I accepted you weren’t going to. I know not the ugliness it carried, the blackened underside of a two-faced coin but perhaps this was the price paid for such elation, for years of bright colors, laughing and slices of heaven. I realized that when it was all over, when the rivers run dry that it was the emptiness that made the winds cold, the world gray, the streets empty, the people cruel and the cold winds bite and the trees shiver. It’s what turned hearts into rock-hard gemstones and what makes hopeless romantics wither. It was the wind that left me, the feeling I felt when I could pinpoint the exact moment my heart dropped to my knees and bled to the floor when I looked into those eyes, those lovely eyes, for the last time. I would forget your face, but the marks, the scars, the things you taught me and the way you made me ache for beauty and an invisible power would stay in me forever long after you have gone. It was not the feeling I felt when I let you go and didn’t run after you.
V.
In its pursuit, and in the withdrawal stage of emotional drug use and admiration, people struggle to constantly search for the fleeting high, the temporary feeling of wonder. There are girls that walk the street in short skirts, high heels and revealing blouses searching for the right things in all the wrong places in between soiled sheets and pockets full of paper. I see the beggars ply the crowded city streets, some with eyes that know the danger but hunger still and some with just innocent ideas, feigned knowledge and naïve understanding.  They search the faces of people and window shop at bars for their favorite pair of jeans, the man or woman that will fit the hole where the heart had been, heal the wounds and the body that will curve and fit theirs so perfectly into a perfect puzzle. It is not what they find on the silver-tongued strangers with sweet lips and deliberate touches. It is not in his lies that sound so much sweet music; that feels like climbing up ladders. It is not in her games, her daring looks and sweet whispers. It is not out in streets, it is not ours to claim ownership over.

I have grown used to
or at least numb to this way of living.
The rain drips through the ivy above,
hitting against the grey planks.
No water lands on my skin;
I am sprawled across the parallel lines of planks in the wooden floor.

I call this the ‘sun grotto’
because of the sundial,
now dark with rainwater,
standing in the circular clearing in the hedges
in front of the entrance to my gazebo.

Today might be a day in October.  And,
since the first drop fell,
I’ve been waiting under the grotto
for what feels like hours—
I haven’t been into the maze at all today;
the darkness on the hedges mirrors
the shadows that line the clouds.

I see no point in moving
from the grotto today, and while I wait for the rain
to pass, I remember
my first day here, a few summers ago—

The humidity at noon under
a liquid sun,
a girl in a rose-colored dress,
our August trip to the hedge maze in the neighboring county,
the laugh she gave as she trotted away:
“let’s get lost in the maze—
come and get me!”
the last I heard of her,
and a glimpse of red cloth rounding the edge
of a wall in the maze,
the last I saw.

We had felt so much excitement
and fear
pressing further through the winding paths
decorated here and there with
fountains, gardens,
idyllic cherub statues,
and the grottoes
which I now use as sleeping places
and—like today—
as cover from the rain
which pours here so often.

The downpour recedes
allowing me at least the chance to walk
through the maze to one of
the tulip gardens.

Not today of course,
but there are days when I hear
the soft laughter of children, friends, and lovers
echo somewhere in the maze—only
a few lanes of manicured green separating me
from them.  Days like those
are difficult to bear.

One day, not too many weeks ago,
I heard those sounds and I smiled;
but it came as a shock to hear
the patter of a pair of running feet, so clearly just around
the clean-cut corner of the hedge I was using for shade.
It was the first—the only—time I had heard a sound in the maze
this close, close enough to see and touch—
through the pinhole gaps in the foliage-wall
I saw a burst of color, like clothing.
I shot around the corner, I glimpsed the flicker
of pale red cloth flagging
behind the form that had slid
into another path through the maze.

The chase had failed
well before I had taken my first wild steps,
hitting the well-tread path hard
with desperate feet.  I yelled like a drunkard.
Later, I noticed the cuts on my fingers and neck,
sliced into the skin as I flung myself through
one wall of green and skid against the next.

Today’s shower is completely over.
I walk myself through the maze, and
avoid the shallow lakes that have formed
in the dips
in the paths, beaten firm by thousands of trampling feet.
Under the sparse autumn light
I collect flowers from one of the many small squares of garden
which I have come to know so well.
With a clump of black
and white tulips in my hands,
I look for a place to ****.
Life here is difficult in the winters.

Faint as a climate-changing bird that flies
All night across the darkness, and at dawn
Falls on the threshold of her native land,
And can no more, thou camest, O my child,
Led upward by the God of ghosts and dreams,
Who laid thee at Eleusis, dazed and dumb,
With passing thro' at once from state to state,
Until I brought thee hither, that the day,
When here thy hands let fall the gather'd flower,
Might break thro' clouded memories once again
On thy lost self. A sudden nightingale
Saw thee, and flash'd into a frolic of song
And welcome; and a gleam as of the moon,
When first she peers along the tremulous deep,
Fled wavering o'er thy face, and chased away
That shadow of a likeness to the king
Of shadows, thy dark mate. Persephone!
Queen of the dead no more--my child! Thine eyes
Again were human-godlike, and the Sun
Burst from a swimming fleece of winter gray,
And robed thee in his day from head to feet--
"Mother!" and I was folded in thine arms.

Child, those imperial, disimpassion'd eyes
Awed even me at first, thy mother--eyes
That oft had seen the serpent-wanded power
Draw downward into Hades with his drift
Of fickering spectres, lighted from below
By the red race of fiery Phlegethon;
But when before have Gods or men beheld
The Life that had descended re-arise,
And lighted from above him by the Sun?
So mighty was the mother's childless cry,
A cry that ran thro' Hades, Earth, and Heaven!

So in this pleasant vale we stand again,
The field of Enna, now once more ablaze
With flowers that brighten as thy footstep falls,
All flowers--but for one black blur of earth
Left by that closing chasm, thro' which the car
Of dark Aidoneus rising rapt thee hence.
And here, my child, tho' folded in thine arms,
I feel the deathless heart of motherhood
Within me shudder, lest the naked glebe
Should yawn once more into the gulf, and thence
The shrilly whinnyings of the team of Hell,
Ascending, pierce the glad and songful air,
And all at once their arch'd necks, midnight-maned,
Jet upward thro' the mid-day blossom. No!
For, see, thy foot has touch'd it; all the space
Of blank earth-baldness clothes itself afresh,
And breaks into the crocus-purple hour
That saw thee vanish.

Child, when thou wert gone,
I envied human wives, and nested birds,
Yea, the cubb'd lioness; went in search of thee
Thro' many a palace, many a cot, and gave
Thy breast to ailing infants in the night,
And set the mother waking in amaze
To find her sick one whole; and forth again
Among the wail of midnight winds, and cried,
"Where is my loved one? Wherefore do ye wail?"
And out from all the night an answer shrill'd,
"We know not, and we know not why we wail."
I climb'd on all the cliffs of all the seas,
And ask'd the waves that moan about the world
"Where? do ye make your moaning for my child?"
And round from all the world the voices came
"We know not, and we know not why we moan."
"Where?" and I stared from every eagle-peak,
I thridded the black heart of all the woods,
I peer'd thro' tomb and cave, and in the storms
Of Autumn swept across the city, and heard
The murmur of their temples chanting me,
Me, me, the desolate Mother! "Where"?--and turn'd,
And fled by many a waste, forlorn of man,
And grieved for man thro' all my grief for thee,--
The jungle rooted in his shatter'd hearth,
The serpent coil'd about his broken shaft,
The scorpion crawling over naked skulls;--
I saw the tiger in the ruin'd fane
Spring from his fallen God, but trace of thee
I saw not; and far on, and, following out
A league of labyrinthine darkness, came
On three gray heads beneath a gleaming rift.
"Where"? and I heard one voice from all the three
"We know not, for we spin the lives of men,
And not of Gods, and know not why we spin!
There is a Fate beyond us." Nothing knew.

Last as the likeness of a dying man,
Without his knowledge, from him flits to warn
A far-off friendship that he comes no more,
So he, the God of dreams, who heard my cry,
Drew from thyself the likeness of thyself
Without thy knowledge, and thy shadow past
Before me, crying "The Bright one in the highest
Is brother of the Dark one in the lowest,
And Bright and Dark have sworn that I, the child
Of thee, the great Earth-Mother, thee, the Power
That lifts her buried life from loom to bloom,
Should be for ever and for evermore
The Bride of Darkness."

So the Shadow wail'd.
Then I, Earth-Goddess, cursed the Gods of Heaven.
I would not mingle with their feasts; to me
Their nectar smack'd of hemlock on the lips,
Their rich ambrosia tasted aconite.
The man, that only lives and loves an hour,
Seem'd nobler than their hard Eternities.
My quick tears ****'d the flower, my ravings hush'd
The bird, and lost in utter grief I fail'd
To send my life thro' olive-yard and vine
And golden grain, my gift to helpless man.
Rain-rotten died the wheat, the barley-spears
Were hollow-husk'd, the leaf fell, and the sun,
Pale at my grief, drew down before his time
Sickening, and Aetna kept her winter snow.
Then He, the brother of this Darkness, He
Who still is highest, glancing from his height
On earth a fruitless fallow, when he miss'd
The wonted steam of sacrifice, the praise
And prayer of men, decreed that thou should'st dwell
For nine white moons of each whole year with me,
Three dark ones in the shadow with thy King.

Once more the reaper in the gleam of dawn
Will see me by the landmark far away,
Blessing his field, or seated in the dusk
Of even, by the lonely threshing-floor,
Rejoicing in the harvest and the grange.
Yet I, Earth-Goddess, am but ill-content
With them, who still are highest. Those gray heads,
What meant they by their "Fate beyond the Fates"
But younger kindlier Gods to bear us down,
As we bore down the Gods before us? Gods,
To quench, not hurl the thunderbolt, to stay,
Not spread the plague, the famine; Gods indeed,
To send the noon into the night and break
The sunless halls of Hades into Heaven?
Till thy dark lord accept and love the Sun,
And all the Shadow die into the Light,
When thou shalt dwell the whole bright year with me,
And souls of men, who grew beyond their race,
And made themselves as Gods against the fear
Of Death and Hell; and thou that hast from men,
As Queen of Death, that worship which is Fear,
Henceforth, as having risen from out the dead,
Shalt ever send thy life along with mine
From buried grain thro' springing blade, and bless
Their garner'd Autumn also, reap with me,
Earth-mother, in the harvest hymns of Earth
The worship which is Love, and see no more
The Stone, the Wheel, the dimly-glimmering lawns
Of that Elysium, all the hateful fires
Of torment, and the shadowy warrior glide
Along the silent field of Asphodel.

Everyday caught
In the labyrinth of mind,
I am,
Where dreams,
And desires
And lust,
From nothing
Conspire something.

Destination: Canada Water.
The next station is Surrey Quays.
Doors will open on the right-hand side.
Exit here for Goldsmith's College.

In the cerebellum
Fragments flash cerebrum bright:
Wheels in tunnels burn,
A neural screech amplified deep,
As waves of electrons churn,
And in multiple places keep.

This stop:
- My birth -
Is in Westminster!

It’s time:

Do you love me?
DO YOU LOVE ME?
          Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

In the space-time continuum,
The labyrinth is forever,
Within a fourth dimension.

It’s time …

You love me, right?
YOU LOVE ME, RIGHT?
    Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

DO-MI-NA-TION
DEATH FREE
DO-MI-NA-TION
ASH FREE

Lost in the labyrinth: a journey to an exit.
The Overground train pulls!
And from floor to ceiling,
Between vertical orange pins,
A medley of languid listless limbs lulls,
       Seated hips,
       Angled legs,
       Dangling feet,
And neck-less heads,
Lost, ghoul-like,
The disconcerted move doggedly on,
Everywhere somewhere; but forever nowhere
Through London's hills and bogs.

From  STOP to STOP,
In the labyrinthine network,
In tubes splayed out on cubes,
Of bright brushed viscose comfort,
Overhead, the ads exhort:

       Top Up Your Soul,
       Fast Forward Your Escape
And
       uSwipe
       uSwitch
       uSave

Like these,
A hundred escalating messages,
Each more insistent than the last,
Compel, enough to distract,
So man’s desire enslaves his heart.

Its time…

         You love, right?
YOU LOVE, RIGHT?
    Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

DO-MI-NA-TION
DEATH FREE
DO-MI-NA-TION
ASH FREE

How? Why?
Has bacterial sludge,
Built these edifices of glass and steel.
This labyrinthian cage,
Whose walls race up at the speed of light,
While the inner commuter flame gutters,
Everywher, in multiverses,
Supernovas explode in showers.
And for a moment, in the moment, The Overground chromatic glows.

New Cross Gate, Canada Water, Southwark.

Lit and digital and LCD:
        
  ALL CHANGE, PLEASE.
  THIS TRAIN TERMINATES HERE

A few automated steps, and:
       Southwark,
       Green Park,
       Then Baker Street,
Appear, fade and disappear.

Now walking down Belsize Road,
On the evening of the
Super Gibbous Moon,
As it rises high over the Ziggurat dimensions of the Alexandra Estate,
And all is blood orange at dusk,
As I, a slinking silhouette,
Make for the event horizon of home,
For surely given, and taken,
A few more bends, another turn,

It’s time, again.

         Love, right?
         LOVE, RIGHT?
    Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

DO-MI-NA-TION
DEATH FREE
DO-MI-NA-TION
FREE ME.

To the event horizon of consciousness,
To that black hole at the core.
In death's star-like eye,
Embrace, pass through,
(Fear not),
On, through the labyrinth northward,
Entering and exiting,
We go awhile, a little longer.

Stars, my Stars,
Again, it's time.

You love me, right?
YOU LOVE ME, RIGHT?
Yes, No, Ohhh (the audience).

SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL
SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL
DEATH FREE.
LOVE!
BE,
WINGS FREE:

     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL

One more stop:

       New Bond Street.

GET BEYOND
DESIRE,
BEYOND THE LABYRINTHEAN LIE,
CONSUMER, DIE!
BE
MATERIAL FREE.

Last stop:

       No-name, this one:

BE:

     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL.

SAY IT:

     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL
     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL
     DEATH FREE.
     LOVE!
     BE,
     WINGS FREE:
    
     WE ARE:
     SU-PER-NA-TU-RAL

Labyrinthine thruway
Unto her house
Wherein just one king and queen
Shalt make amour' until neverending paradise
Two in deepest melody
Making a holy sacrifice!!!!

I have so many musings
my hands they are complaining,
cuz I can't get them all right,
an so quickly jot them down,

An I feel that I'm connected,
to all my friends and my dear neighbors
an all that I can hear is just is that sound!

Of sweet snowflakes as they're falling,
in the silence sweet n pure,
an so softly as I hear them,
touch the ground,

An soon I'll imagine,
oh a winter wonderland,
in a covering in all you see around,

Those lovely floating wisps,
are so intricate-amazing
those parachuting sprites,
here they abound!

If you ever catch one close up,
well you really really oughta,
cuz the labyrinthine in sight
it will astound!

They are happy little ships afloat,
with an octagonal shape,
landing on all  life,
once sorely browned,

Every child and adult,
is now looking up in awe,
as there smiles turning up ,
instead of frowned!

I thought that I was lost,
an I'd never get to see,

but in poetry it seems-
that  I am found!

Ma Cherie © 2017

How treacherous.
How boring.
It was a time between three and four.
A time between eleven and one.
The pre-emptive witching hour.
The incidental grey area.

My mind was a-buzz.
My thoughts were flashing.
I knew not what they were,
But I was morose and melancholic.

I could not work.
I could not sleep.
I could not think.
Chaos had become my order.
And infinity had become my moment.

Then, there ahead of me,  
Stood two women,
Straight and strong.
One was a Siren
The other, a Muse.

I thought hallucinations.
Perceived ideas through a ******* mind.
But alas, they were real.
I touched them and reacted.

Warned against their poison.
Their mercuric tongues.
Their stolen hearts.
Their arachidonic souls.
And their odd Tsavorite eyes.

They walked.
I followed.
Into a labyrinthine hive,
They sauntered.
Nonchalant angels,
Indifferent to my stalk.

In the centre, there lay
An abyss.
They sat on the edge
And beckoned me
Forth.
I accepted, curious, yet cautious.
And through the Song of the Siren,
And the Myth of the Muse,
The blackness beckoned.

I fell, I flew to my mind’s end.
Accepted my descent, unknowingly.
The air was still. The tunnel black.
And I landed softly.
Alone. Safe. Hungry.
So, I walked to the edge.
The Siren waited. Offered her tail
And walked.

Crawled into smoke, was a Rat.
The Siren pointed, then followed
The smoke.
Rat awoke, to run to my foot,
Up my leg and towards my shoulder.

Rat pointed too,
So I walked to the edge
To appear in water.
Glistening and moist
Stood the Muse,
With a smile on her lips.

Again her tail led me,
As Rat jumped to the Muse.
We glided in the water,
Blinded in the dark,
Until we reached a cave, having dodged the rocks.

Inside, I was left,
Save for Rat.
The Muse flew off, a smile on her lips.
Drowning, by my waist, was a rodent. Erinaceous and small.
I lifted it up and placed Hedgehog on the opposite shoulder.

Hedgehog thanked me,
And showed me the way.
A niche in the rock.
We entered, all the same.

On the other side was a bed.
There lied the Siren and the Muse.
Seductive and Bare.
I was pulled forth.
Their tails were strong.
Their tongues were mercury.
Their hearts were stolen.
Their souls were arachidonic.
Their eyes were Tsavorite.
I was poisoned all along.

In vapid lust,
Morose passion,
Melancholic ecstasy,
It ended.
They have left me
Only with Rat and Hedgehog.

Here I will die.
Led to be abused.
All that shall be known
Of my boring and treacherous
Witching hour
Is this story.
I dedicate it to
The Muse,
The Siren,
Who are but one girl.
And to Rat, Hedgehog and me
Who is but one *******.

You know what the stories say
About me. They call me silly,
Foolish, disobedient. They say
I should have listened to my
Father. Now he was a guy
Worth listening to: the one
Who built the labyrinth -- the one
That caged the bull-headed beast
And sent virgins, hopelessly
Lost, to their deaths.

He made me a pair of wings
And when he was finished
told me to contemplate my
mortality. And not to fly too close
To the sun. For the feathers
Were joined only by wax and days
But the sun was made of
molten fire and eternity.

How could I listen though?
When after so long
Penned in the cool, dim labyrinthine
Depths of his workshop, I was finally
Free. A soft warm shaft of sunlight
pierced me through and I was lost.
On my ****** flight, I was ecstatically
lost, rising madly to the shivering
brink of infinity.

Imagine me with my great white
waxen feathered wings circling
(Circling) (Circling) spiraling
Higher and higher to a crisis.

Oh I melted.
Then I fell.

I do wish they'd asked me how I'd have
Liked to be remembered though: Not
the merely foolish bull-headed kid
who refused to obey,
But the dreamer with wild eyes,
The one who once flew
too close to the Sun
And briefly,
(All too briefly)
Blazed.

Mind, like a deciduous forest
has lost all its foliage,
all leaves torn away
by the autumnal blasts

The brain where great schemes were concocted
is now an abyss where spiders sway
It is bare – dismally barren
of all memories – sweet and sour
Like a kite afloat in the boundless sky
moving nowhere, but as the wind directs,
cut out from the past, turned from the present
with the future yet to surge from the abyss
or like serpents intertwining,    
hissing in turmoil within the brain,
unable to sense the gusty blast,
or hear the whispering air,
dead to sounds that disturb,
deaf to songs that soothe,
like a phantom he moves weird,
drifting far away
to a space and time impenetrable  
with nothing to make the mind agog
or depress it to let out a sigh.

Loitering on roads without hurrying feet
with no bliss coming on the way
to run or hasten to embrace
or fear to be missed sore
passing through dark labyrinthine tunnels
forever barred with no exit
churned in oblivion, oblivious of all,
he remains a spectral facsimile
of his onetime self
plummeting into a black hole

The pulse of a heart beat
is all that keeps him alive,  
all else is dead…… !  
with dreary nights ahead
that shall not know another morrow

(I hate poets.
They annoy me deeply.)

I.

There are the balladeers,
Working in service of their inner Service,
(Though, despite the seeming impossibility,
Their hackneyed verse is even worse)
Creating tortuous rhyme
Which slows down labyrinthine narratives
Ending up in some deus ex machine
So implausible that it would make Euripides blush
(Most often courtesy of some unforeseen projectile
Or sudden viral contagion;
Would that their creators meet such a fate!)

II.

I come not to praise the so-called sonneteers,
But to bury them.
They are an earnest lot,
(Lord knows that they are earnest)
And they will make their fourteen lines rhyme
(Though sometimes the rhyme scheme screams for mercy)
And hang the cost.
Though their narratives are head-scratching things,
And their iambs proceed with the steadiness
Of a nonagenarian church pianist
Doing her damndest to fight the wedding march to a draw,
They are content, nay, proud of their work
Because babble rhymes with Scrabble
(Though they are not particularly proficient with the latter,
They have the former down to an art.)

III.

Let us not forget the Buk-zombies,
Those apostles of aphorism,
Most of whom speak of their departed deity
As if he were an old drinking buddy
(Never mind that most of them were two or three
Or perhaps not even a bad idea
In the back seat of some mom’s Buick
When he exited this mortal plane, stage left, even.)
One’s mind is boggled whilst considering
The expanse of the bar required to accommodate
Everyone who would like to
(Or worse, have claimed to)
Buy old Charlie a beer, not that he’d stand for a round.
They are a sullen horde, this lot,
Best dealt with by aiming for the base of the skull.

IV.
Ah, the confessionals, Lord have mercy upon their souls
(For they shall have none upon ours.)
They feel so many things so deeply
As such things have never been felt before
(They have not read their Sexton, their Snodgrass,
Their Lowell, their Pl--well, no,
They have all read their Plath.)
It is, from the moment they arise in the morning
Until such time they set aside their fears and let sleep take them,
All too much for them,
And they bravely face the days
Until such time they care bear to take action
And fling themselves from some convenient precipice.
We should, as a service to them and ourselves,
Ensure the soles of their shoes
Are sufficiently worn and slippery.

(I hate poets.
They annoy me deeply.)

Journeys rendered dateless,
Unending,
Wayward and extending out,
Round the compass points --
Dizzying aspiration to cease this race,
To slow my sprinting soul,
This pace splintering, in exhaustion.

Expiring breath of hope or of home
Evaporated in a distance
Vanishing and
Disconnected.
Drifting
On trackless tides, across
Labyrinthine depths,
Within the vast heart
Of the world
I cannot run from.

Yet, I moved to and between
The center or its peripherals, in
Singular or collectives,
Seeking pattern and
Drawing connectives –-
Brushing by and
Bustling among
People
Entranced In their own
Objectives.

I watched their movements
And their exchanges,
I heard their rituals and
Invocations.
In all these transitions,
They have no inkling
That their seemingly trite
Lives merely manifest
The epic motifs of the heavens!

Our imaginations mirror
The vitality of the gods!
We are as immortal as they!
Our simple, sensual stories
Are also enduring legends
Unfolding,
As our pages turn,
Our flags are unfurling!

Just as our fellow
Olympians of old
Engaged in a marathon of
Endeavor to heights
Unimagined!
From those mystic days
Since Orpheus’ ardent lyre
Sang notes
Of Nature’s divinity, Her
Eternal sweetness.

We need only sense that
It is in Nature’s essence
We are sharing.
With her, we are joined in
An undying marriage,
A unified pairing –
Our human heritage,
Our dignified bearing.

We share in that song,  
We share in that sweetness,
We share in that race,
We share in Her immanence.

This journey is our own.

It goes on, unending!

I told you not to pardon me
cause I couldn't let you count on me
but you put every bet on me against all odds...
I told you to hide your soul
instead you gave me heart mind and all
I told you I was a thorny road
you walked it bare footed
wincing at every *****
believing that right ahead things would change...
I told you I was a broken Eagle
but you believed you could fix my wings
I was a volcano waiting to erupt
you wasn't afraid of the larva, thought you could adapt
I told you I was splinters
and you started picking up the pieces
I told you I was hell
and you said you wanted to dance with my demons
When I revealed that I knew not how to dance
you said life's a lesson and you would be my teacher
"What if the song of our affection ends?"
I questioned with the belief that love's just a word
but you assured me that we would keep dancing
even after the song's gone silent...
because that's what real love's do
or at least we would dance until you found all the shards.
I told you I was a labyrinthine jungle
and you right away took adventures in my wild
even when I told you I was a wrecked ship lost at sea
you said that'd you'd find me free from the ecstasy
of this perilous world...
I told you I was a desert ...
but you were okay with sand and sweat
even thirst didn't scare you away
I told you I was a thunder-storm waiting to rain
malady and you said you've known such kind of pain,
you've withered storms that left you Ocean wet
so it wouldn't hurt playing in the rain again...
I said I was a wilting rose
and right away you started watering my hopes
with tender sprinkles of care
and weeding out despair
with endless promises to always be there...
I told you I was frozen inside and incapable of loving
and you said you'd place me in your warm embrace
and bare the icy chill for eternity
if that's what it took to melt the snow...
I told you I was all wounds and painful scars
you responded with "I know..."
and you said even Angels are not perfect...
I told you I had nothing but me to give
and you told me I was everything you always wanted
I tried not to believe
but I was enchanted...
I said I loved you not because you said it too
or because I ran out of excuses
but because it was true...
and because I was tired of pushing away
those gifting me a second chance...

Life's hard when you have no one
To talk to
No one
To rely on

Your mother does not believe in you
No one supports you
Your family members constantly underestimate
What you are capable of doing and whats not
You are literally in a negative circle
Proximately in the ring

And friends are the ones who are
Always there for you
Through ups and down
Through thick and thin

But it comes to realization that
Friends don't stick long enough
Friends do come and go
And the word 'forever' is often misused
Until it loses it's own meaning
No one believes in forever now
No such thing as eternal love
Cause that's all *******

And all that left is You
You are always there for me
When they's no one
You watch me grow
You listen to every inexplicable words inside of me
Because You know better
Than the rest.

So, thank You.

Sediment slabs purl down soft rock,
parched charcoal lathers soot - scintillate,
smothered form in slate deluge,
where the sun can take refuge,
saturnine in the hiemal shift of the alcove,
and nebulous spume caroms  - gaseous halations ,
off scalding waters, sweet smoke arise,
tenuous strings of light gossamer in the eyes ,
meshed scales loll down,
corona tendrils stream over sunken psilocybe,
equilibrium sun-warped - flares effulgent,
seeping into trails of salt-lacerated skin,
wax beads singeing skin - summer hit of apocalypse fever

I work for Jones & Co.
You are likely somewhere down below,
I have grown used to this unnatural height.
Once, here, as a younger man, I read articles,
working on cases just long enough to cultivate indifference.
My first firm party, I was made to wear an ivy laurel.
We were mingling on the penthouse deck,
when a gust unceremoniously removed it from my head.

Jones is a superstitious man,
he has a dream-catcher above his office door.
He designed a vaulted spiral staircase on our fifty-first floor.
The one separates Jones from his company,
the other, us from below.
Five years of billing in six minute blocks,
labyrinthine increments, Herculean costs.
A kind of optic chiasma where the nerves cross and people get lost.



B.E. Twain

I am alive buried in an avalanche
Of thoughts, every depth
Is the cavernous nature of being
By myself, living by myself,
And looking for myself
In the wade of the dark waters.

I cannot accept this me.

I write, I perceive, existing.
There is a thousand mirrors
With echoes in the labyrinth,
My voice
Cannot listen to itself.

Why am I screaming.

I feel like a prisoner
In this chamber
Of a universe's mind,
Thoughts of a playful dahlia,
Maybe I am naive.
The me inside me
Cannot exist without
The me that does without
Thoughts.
Two way existence
In a one way mirror.

I don't know the reflection.

Wounded man
Of a voiceless persona,
Who am I to know myself
Against a labyrinth of mirrors,
Each an odd reflection
Of a past that becomes infinite,
Buried beneath a thousand of me.

Ingénue, Ingénue
mellifluous intonation;
within my ear
intangible embrocation!

Emollient to my inure
lithe and lilt affections-
A panacea, a talisman
fetching provocation.

Ingénue, Ingénue
Why must you fall
into such fugacious
dalliances?

Becoming and comely
are you
The cynosure of men
dissembling by demure

Ingénue, Ingénue
how easily I imbue
sempiternal scintilla
into naive little you

Lo, during my brooding-
arrive in halcyon gambol,
Dulcet or Saccharine
Is it me or you?

Ingénue, oh Ingénue
an epiphany, so true
a furtive labyrinthine
past the offing of you

None so opulent
cast more than penumbra.
T'would simply be Pyrrhic
to go on, continue.

ONE WHISPER OF THE BELOVED.

Lovers share a sacred decree –
to seek the Beloved.
They roll head over heels,
rushing toward the Beautiful One
like a torrent of water.

In truth, everyone is a shadow of the Beloved –
Our seeking is His seeking,
Our words are His words.

At times we flow toward the Beloved
like a dancing stream.
At times we are still water
held in His pitcher.
At times we boil in a ***
turning to vapor –
that is the job of the Beloved.

He breathes into my ear
until my soul
takes on His fragrance.
He is the soul of my soul –
How can I escape?
But why would any soul in this world
want to escape from the Beloved?

He will melt your pride
making you thin as a strand of hair,
Yet do not trade, even for both worlds,
One strand of His hair.

We search for Him here and there
while looking right at Him.
Sitting by His side we ask,
“O Beloved, where is the Beloved?”

Enough with such questions! –
Let silence take you to the core of life.

All your talk is worthless
When compared to one whisper
of the Beloved.

Ode 442 trans. by Jonathan Star and Shahram Shiva
A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi

Links

(Rumi Poetry)          (Rumi)
*-Found this gem by the mystical master in a labyrinthine corner of the web. All credits and thanks to the translators who put it there and cared!!.-MAX CHELUR.

We were a beleaguered bard born,
a chief in chatoyant charms charged with
the principle petrichor of passionate paramours;
to drive the dainty dalliances
of incipient ingénues immured in
glamourous gossamer gowns;
lilting, lead lissome lads 'long labyrinthine love;
mischeiviously make mellifluous mondegreens;
sing of such serendipity: surreptitiously susurrous sessions
scintillas of Spring's sempiternal sentiments!

But fetching fugues fade fast, felicity's fated to fly. For
penumbral poets, it portends a pyrrhic pay.
We wander woebegone, waiting wistfully.
Lovers leave lyricists to languish in lonely lassitude.
The halcyon heyday has harbingered
inbroglio in the inured inventor of infatuation.
Why? With what wherewithal?
Often our offerings off us, opposite of, obviously, obtaining, or,
lucidly: lyrical lacers of Love likewise lack its livening lagniappe.

Acquiesce here my love
Ameliorate my heart
The assemblage of circumstance provides dulcet ebullience
An efflorescent dalliance conflated into cathartic becoming
My bucolic bungalow made upon your callipygous
A young Life’s denouement
Your evocative elixir fetching
An erstwhile emollient embrocation
Your eloquent fingers find their way to frisson
My felicitous chatoyant gambols in glamor like a halcyon incipient made ineffable by the look of the ingénue
The labyrinthine inglenook lagoon leisurely lithe
The murmurous daffodils wink at the insouciance of your beauty
A panoply panacea, the half shadow complete as an epiphany
Quintessential to feminine riparian resplendence
Your mellifluous voice, an opulent offing, the sumptuous summery soliloquy of an angel
Cools my soul like the smell of earth after rain
Your propinquity ripples the scintilla of my spirit
Your surreptitious smile like a zephyr quietly whispers
Its redolent seraglio sempiternal in my thoughts
As skyward gazes like saccharine gossamer lilt with the knowledge of our raveling juxtaposition
a masterful pastiche, the cynosure of divine revelation

Apparently,
my eyes blaze
with intensity,
emotions, and feelings
I can never suppress;

a labyrinthine
of your deepest emotions
intertwined in a single spark
reflected in my eye

A Cimmerian hue overlaps
The thoughts encroaching my psyche
They seem to harvest labyrinthine symmetries
Of which I covet
It matters not the appositeness
The unidentified may bear
For by passages of valor I transcend

Out of the poisonous East,
Over a continent of blight,
Like a maleficent Influence released
From the most squalid cellarage of hell,
The Wind-Fiend, the abominable--
The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light--
Comes slouching, sullen and obscene,
******* the skirts of the embittered night;
And in a cloud unclean
Of excremental humours, roused to strife
By the operation of some ruinous change,
Wherever his evil mandate run and range,
Into a dire intensity of life,
A craftsman at his bench, he settles down
To the grim job of throttling London Town.

So, by a jealous lightlessness beset
That might have oppressed the dragons of old time
Crunching and groping in the abysmal slime,
A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams,
Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet,
The afflicted City, prone from mark to mark
In shameful occultation, seems
A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting,
With wavering gulfs and antic heights, and shifting,
Rent in the stuff of a material dark,
Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale,
Shows like the *****'s living blotch of bale:
Uncoiling monstrous into street on street
Paven with perils, teeming with mischance,
Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread,
Working with oaths and threats and faltering feet
Somewhither in the hideousness ahead;
Working through wicked airs and deadly dews
That make the laden robber grin askance
At the good places in his black romance,
And the poor, loitering harlot rather choose
Go pinched and pined to bed
Than lurk and shiver and curse her wretched way
From arch to arch, scouting some threepenny prey.

Forgot his dawns and far-flushed afterglows,
His green garlands and windy eyots forgot,
The old Father-River flows,
His watchfires cores of menace in the gloom,
As he came oozing from the Pit, and bore,
Sunk in his filthily transfigured sides,
Shoals of dishonoured dead to tumble and rot
In the squalor of the universal shore:
His voices sounding through the gruesome air
As from the Ferry where the Boat of Doom
With her blaspheming cargo reels and rides:
The while his children, the brave ships,
No more adventurous and fair,
Nor tripping it light of heel as home-bound brides,
But infamously enchanted,
Huddle together in the foul eclipse,
Or feel their course by inches desperately,
As through a tangle of alleys ******-haunted,
From sinister reach to reach out--out--to sea.

And Death the while--
Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile,
Death in his threadbare working trim--
Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland,
And with expert, inevitable hand
Feels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung,
Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart:
Thus signifying unto old and young,
However hard of mouth or wild of whim,
'Tis time--'tis time by his ancient watch--to part
From books and women and talk and drink and art.
And you go humbly after him
To a mean suburban lodging:  on the way
To what or where
Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say:
And you--how should you care
So long as, unreclaimed of hell,
The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable,
Thus vicious and thus patient, sits him down
To the black job of burking London Town?

"Thus fought the heroes, tranquil their admirable hearts, violent their swords,
resigned to **** and to die." – Jorge Louis Borges, The Garden of Forking Paths

stoic labyrinthine sparrow-bone;
there is a slalom down your gullet,
bayonet curled around your neck,
you have a beak, you are *****-smooth,
have rubble for skin, an emaciated infinity:
everything is fractal so eat your words
they are you are your rusty toenails
every footstep is a holocaust there’s
genocide under your neurons,
watch them flex and shiver.

you have soft plastic lips,
there is a vacuum in your gullet,
a box cutter carving
through your adam’s apple:
epileptics are just indecisive,
when they seize hold their tongues
they are their words you are a god
are oppenheimer and shiva,
pick favorites it doesn’t matter
it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter
flex and shimmer we are just neurons
flatlines are not ghoulish nooses,
paraplegics are just cowards,
move with conviction each step
is a genocide, you have wooden
teeth and woolen wings,
thrashes are a velveteen sunset
an edible fog, your stomach
is a stomach do not eat the fog
just know that someday it will **** you
softly and swiftly.

it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter:
infinity is not recursive
alive is not our default state
once is the only route
blood makes the blade holy
if you cut me i will bleed,
i won't blame you just know
you were only ever
that very moment.

A Woman of Many Words

I am a Woman of Many Words
I am drawn to all those places
        That words congregate:
                 Libraries and bookstores
                       Road signs and billboards
                             Ticket stubs and subtitles
                                    Nametags and license plates
Each one a journey driving inside me
I am a Woman of Many Words
I love the way the shapes feel in my mouth
The skittle taste of syllables
I am drawn to especially long words
With their phonetic entities stretching out like tentacles to reach new corners of pronunciation
Words like
              Bibliophile and flippant-irreverence
                      Evanescent and Insouciance
      Mellifluous and Effervescent
                                       Mondegreen and Labyrinthine
Words like
Onomatopoeia and Tintinnabulation
I appreciate their weight on my tongue
The way my hands appreciate the thickness that is a fat book
I am a Woman of Many Words
I am attracted to their multitude
The space their figures take up on a page
The calligraphic punches
Typed up by keys
The carefully constructed
Brush strokes
Spouting
What is sure to be, nonsense
But I do enjoy the sound of nonsense in the morning
I am a Woman of Many Words
I cling to the lettered skyscrapers wherever I can find them
Because the familiar scent of scribbles across parchment is comfort food for me
I find them
On the backs of cereal boxes
And in Popsicle riddles
In fortune cookies
And alphabet soup
From magnets on my fridge
To junk food logos
And I hold on to them for dear life
For fear that silence should find me
And leave me empty
For fear it will take away the music of maracas
Made by words
Dancing the salsa inside me

I am a Woman of Many Words
because Words
Answer my Questions,
Soothe my fears,
and Humor my Whims
They are not always Right
But they are always Constant
They are not always Honest, in fact,
Mostly
They Lie
But ever so often
They tell such a Beautiful Lie
That you wish it were true
They sing from the rocks
offering Escape from
Terrifying,
Suffocating,
Mind numbing Silence
that echoes off my skeleton
I am afraid that silence will hollow out my insides
and leave me abandoned
with nothing between my Bow and Stern
my Forecastle all torn up
I am afraid of the skeleton inside me
So I am a Woman of Many of Words
For fear of silence
And contempt for truth
Because my words are sirens
And my shipwreck is home here

wallpaper women
are ripped down in single sheets,
replaced by prettier ones
with more labyrinthine markings
and colours that shine,
but even then, a picture is placed overtop,
in a fine gold frame and a fibre canvas
with artwork drawn by feeble hands

wallpaper women,
are women.
they are you and i. we are bystanders,
eager to scream out, but a single hand
covers our mouths like a veneer.
we are to blend in,
we are to not speak,
unless we are asking,
“how may i take your order?”
we are a service, a factory,
we keep the world going.

wallpaper women
are artwork,
art that is not noticed by them,
who continue to believe
they are mere pieces of decoration,
something to make the walls pretty.
if we are artwork, why are we covered
with frames and photos and decoration?

wallpaper women
are people.
we are nurturers by nature,
lovers through hatred.
and so many refuse to see
the storm above the soft clouds.

wallpaper women
are told to blend in.
but we are ripped down like pages out of a book,
crumpled up and thrown into nothing.
if you value the story so much,
why do you keep taking pages out?

wallpaper women
are not the future,
they are the past.

women are the future.
women.
women.
women,
            need to be heard.
women need to say “i am here too”
because we are not
just wallpaper,
we are beautiful ****** artwork
that deserves to be seen by
every
        ******
                    one

A Reading from the Book of Puppets

Her
Ventriloquist venom is never ending
engineering every word I should say

Pity me as her words drip down from my mouth
Look to me... my paralyzing awkwardness admonishes all attempts at paucity  

the ***** of vernacular continues
Manifest as a million babble born words
look at her and you’ll know why
Would you sell your soul
if you spoke staccato and she smiled sadistic?

And when she’s not there
I lay prostrate on the railroad tracks
of her impending presence
restrained
and retrained in the tailisman rope of your arrival
Look there now, a Tongue tied in knots, a mind firing (shots)
I am reduced
she is labyrinthine, in both style, and substance,
a sapiosexual maze, a soothing syrup mixed with
biter bile


why then does
nothing feel better than to see her smile
Why validate her pleasure
with my defeats?
Stuck and ****** into a singular melodious smile, the tune of which I can’t help but dance to

Why? Because at the end of the day

your eyes jut out
candelabras in defiance the night
notifying the world
of all you want but have yet to receive
a shallow existence .... a marked man... a million morbid motifs
made of mucus and stuttered star beams

You are that rare being, a glimpse at myself both wretched and alluring
A soul already tainted::: still I seek to embrue, the boredom
I am voiceless
in this decaffinated life

a tendril of hair
a woman domestic
a shadowland chaser
a light that’s poetic
The addictive tape worm of my soul

cdh

A firetruck races past the isolate Blue Fox and infinity. Dulcimer clatters fading brickwork on the cross markets and churches where blind men are the imagining heaven. Luminescent Volcanic leaves heated from sunfire beautiful in the Spring choke lanes which are battered by abstract cavern homes. What happened to the Orient Harpsichord Serenity? Where does the Blue Fox go? Incense Markets Sauna with Smoke are busy in Denpasar while I'm here at a North American shopping mall where Ivory Columns cradled in violet fauna do wait sturdy and enchanted in rows.
Here I'm waiting by the leather clay shade bench in silent meditation breathing community whispers and listening clear to water pour from the lionhead fountain. Parrots caw atop a wide gated ceiling facing Empyreus.

There is a fire in America. The Blue Fox is hidden beneath firs and palms bathing in humidity. The Blue Fox is writing prophecies of economic collapse and rampant pointless murders making the newspapers. Ash storms blazing while banana painted trucks row on row attend to Victorian wood panels cooling to onyx powder in too short a time. There is no room for learning when The End Times go too quickly.
I'm listening to Bob Dylan scream instrumental prayer on harmonica rough against my ears. The Blue Fox treads February Beaches a few hundred miles from Australia and whistling the words of flowers in his head. He chews on wheatgrass jangling change in his fur pockets like those cartoons. He is the vision of Bohemia, he is an active star dazzled in this beguiled galaxy, yet in his spine he carries the turmoil doppleganger kept by all and known by none.
The firetrucks are doing all they can to quell the lung-poison vase boiling an apartment dancing inside but it continues to grow in its enraged fury.

There's a fire in America boys and girls, come around and see.
Canoes of memorial gold row through oppression and genocide, the Inuits and First Peoples of ancient years are wondering too where the blue fox went when agony cries the air. Stories of wisdom replaced with stories of war. Balaclavas labyrinthine through  exotic Bazaars thick with music and plants hanging off fishhooks and brass coat hangers while I write and dream of such Valhallas in my shopping mall on a quiet afternoon.
Bill is playing the banjo with faded paint and a single broken string, there he is on Yates! Cowboy hat made of charcoal velvet holding a meager collection of change.  
Stephen Schizophrenia is lying on his back watching aluminum kingdoms hover on by expanding nimbus clouds. He has eleven dollars to his name along with a damaged half torn belt with his initials engraved on the buckle  He taps his feet to Edith Piaf howling "La Vie En Rose" while an Airplane collides with his sacred personal aluminum palace, suddenly he can't block out the repressed memories he's fought decades to hide deep and dark in his bleak jazz enthralled brains.

Maybe we're all supposed to fall apart. Maybe we're designed to hurt and cause hurt. Where is that ****** Blue Fox? He's ebullient, thoughts fragmented in sharp bliss glass cutting him through while he rolls around the sands catching Buddha particles in his paws digging holes on Kuta Beach to his Idyllic land where happiness is forever and therefore false.

The Blue Fox falls in love overwhelming with everybody and every soul. So many souls by the billions every place! Even the tyrants. Even the demons. Even the necrophiliac scoring an OD'd brunette at twenty six from Anaheim who collapsed flatlined by prescriptions on a 3rd floor Complex.
He adores the narcissist who loves everybody as fully as The Blue Fox as long as they are herself. She is the harmonic untainted flytrap unaware of its own venomous nature but jealous of Summer and jealous of those whose names are heralded through generation to generation.
He adores The addict who is hollow of everything but the ****** sizzling under his patchy skin while he sinks from divinity swelling through his heart. He smiles while the remaining light dies inside him, left with only the regret remedies of suicide.
He adores The artist who fled to the big City and became nothing but watered down pigment after the Capitalists tossed him off the nearest skyscraper shouting pretentious metaphors.

The Blue Fox loves them all! He has no concept of the corrupt, or the lazy, or the greedy and needy and crazy and forgotten. They are all equal to him! The Blue Fox is knelt on paisley carpet smooth and spectacular! His regular India ashram, uplifting his body and his mind. The blue fox knows no doubt. Or anxiety, frailty or tears. He has no impulse or desire. The Blue Fox is joy in form and breathing spectrums of color mixing to combinations we cannot perceive.

There is a fire in america. It rages on unstoppable. It engulfs countries thousands of miles and histories away. It swallows the morning, noon and night. It protrudes disease in its wake. It heats up the ozone layer allowing radiation to make us more than cancer the zodiac. It causes our terror. It blots out our ardor. It havocs our heroes. Nothing is clean anymore. There is a fire in America.

And America is the world!  I'm watching out the front doors of this shopping mall where an elderly man trips at the food court escalator and becomes more renowned with every lethal collision down the tiles of freedom. Paramedics arrive shortly after and attend to another scalded by that same fire.
Up and up it goes!

True tangled Gordian thoughts entwine
Amid labyrinthine paths that wind
Sliding sledding serpentine
To assay value and extent
Braid a mind a shoreward end
Seeking weeping thrashing send
Infused with knowledge deep and sound
A consciousness cogitabund
Within the portals self confined
Disconnected judgements breed
Diffuse journeys often made
To darkened places
Where no light
Of vision lucid sparkling bright
Will penetrate and seem so safe
Writhing heavy leaden womb
Elusive dissolute abound
Reclusive and so moribund
But in the darkened space there seems
A distant tendril sparkling white
A reaching focal point to strive
To make that leap
Great grasping bound
Wrapping arms so safe around
Clasping forgone lines abandoned
Sublimating impasse upward
Strength of purpose
Welling forward
Great eruption spewing outwards
Lava flowed eureka moment
Spreading outwards
Flowing downwards
Cogent sentient live born
Brewed in darkness
Drinks the bright
With clarity and strength unite
Dazzling brilliant shining moment
Cleft asunder glorious light  ....!

And sometimes in this crazy maze of life we get misplaced,
and we lose ourselves.