A Poem for Three Voices

Setting:  A Maternity Ward and round about

FIRST VOICE:
I am slow as the world.  I am very patient,
Turning through my time, the suns and stars
Regarding me with attention.
The moon's concern is more personal:
She passes and repasses, luminous as a nurse.
Is she sorry for what will happen?  I do not think so.
She is simply astonished at fertility.

When I walk out, I am a great event.
I do not have to think, or even rehearse.
What happens in me will happen without attention.
The pheasant stands on the hill;
He is arranging his brown feathers.
I cannot help smiling at what it is I know.
Leaves and petals attend me.  I am ready.

SECOND VOICE:
When I first saw it, the small red seep, I did not believe it.
I watched the men walk about me in the office.  They were so flat!
There was something about them like cardboard, and now I had caught it,
That flat, flat, flatness from which ideas, destructions,
Bulldozers, guillotines, white chambers of shrieks proceed,
Endlessly proceed--and the cold angels, the abstractions.
I sat at my desk in my stockings, my high heels,

And the man I work for laughed:  'Have you seen something awful?
You are so white, suddenly.'  And I said nothing.
I saw death in the bare trees, a deprivation.
I could not believe it.  Is it so difficult
For the spirit to conceive a face, a mouth?
The letters proceed from these black keys, and these black keys proceed
From my alphabetical fingers, ordering parts,

Parts, bits, cogs, the shining multiples.
I am dying as I sit.  I lose a dimension.
Trains roar in my ears, departures, departures!
The silver track of time empties into the distance,
The white sky empties of its promise, like a cup.
These are my feet, these mechanical echoes.
Tap, tap, tap, steel pegs.  I am found wanting.

This is a disease I carry home, this is a death.
Again, this is a death.  Is it the air,
The particles of destruction I **** up?  Am I a pulse
That wanes and wanes, facing the cold angel?
Is this my lover then?  This death, this death?
As a child I loved a lichen-bitten name.
Is this the one sin then, this old dead love of death?

THIRD VOICE:
I remember the minute when I knew for sure.
The willows were chilling,
The face in the pool was beautiful, but not mine--
It had a consequential look, like everything else,
And all I could see was dangers:  doves and words,
Stars and showers of gold--conceptions, conceptions!
I remember a white, cold wing

And the great swan, with its terrible look,
Coming at me, like a castle, from the top of the river.
There is a snake in swans.
He glided by; his eye had a black meaning.
I saw the world in it--small, mean and black,
Every little word hooked to every little word, and act to act.
A hot blue day had budded into something.

I wasn't ready.  The white clouds rearing
Aside were dragging me in four directions.
I wasn't ready.
I had no reverence.
I thought I could deny the consequence--
But it was too late for that.  It was too late, and the face
Went on shaping itself with love, as if I was ready.

SECOND VOICE:
It is a world of snow now.  I am not at home.
How white these sheets are.  The faces have no features.
They are bald and impossible, like the faces of my children,
Those little sick ones that elude my arms.
Other children do not touch me:  they are terrible.
They have too many colors, too much life.  They are not quiet,
Quiet, like the little emptinesses I carry.

I have had my chances.  I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare *****,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard.  I have tried to be natural.
I have tried to be blind in love, like other women,
Blind in my bed, with my dear blind sweet one,
Not looking, through the thick dark, for the face of another.

I did not look.  But still the face was there,
The face of the unborn one that loved its perfections,
The face of the dead one that could only be perfect
In its easy peace, could only keep holy so.
And then there were other faces.  The faces of nations,
Governments, parliaments, societies,
The faceless faces of important men.

It is these men I mind:
They are so jealous of anything that is not flat!  They are jealous gods
That would have the whole world flat because they are.
I see the Father conversing with the Son.
Such flatness cannot but be holy.
'Let us make a heaven,' they say.
'Let us flatten and launder the grossness from these souls.'

FIRST VOICE:
I am calm.  I am calm.  It is the calm before something awful:
The yellow minute before the wind walks, when the leaves
Turn up their hands, their pallors.  It is so quiet here.
The sheets, the faces, are white and stopped, like clocks.
Voices stand back and flatten.  Their visible hieroglyphs
Flatten to parchment screens to keep the wind off.
They paint such secrets in Arabic, Chinese!

I am dumb and brown.  I am a seed about to break.
The brownness is my dead self, and it is sullen:
It does not wish to be more, or different.
Dusk hoods me in blue now, like a Mary.
O color of distance and forgetfulness!--
When will it be, the second when Time breaks
And eternity engulfs it, and I drown utterly?

I talk to myself, myself only, set apart--
Swabbed and lurid with disinfectants, sacrificial.
Waiting lies heavy on my lids.  It lies like sleep,
Like a big sea.  Far off, far off, I feel the first wave tug
Its cargo of agony toward me, inescapable, tidal.
And I, a shell, echoing on this white beach
Face the voices that overwhelm, the terrible element.

THIRD VOICE:
I am a mountain now, among mountainy women.
The doctors move among us as if our bigness
Frightened the mind.  They smile like fools.
They are to blame for what I am, and they know it.
They hug their flatness like a kind of health.
And what if they found themselves surprised, as I did?
They would go mad with it.

And what if two lives leaked between my thighs?
I have seen the white clean chamber with its instruments.
It is a place of shrieks.  It is not happy.
'This is where you will come when you are ready.'
The night lights are flat red moons.  They are dull with blood.
I am not ready for anything to happen.
I should have murdered this, that murders me.

FIRST VOICE:
There is no miracle more cruel than this.
I am dragged by the horses, the iron hooves.
I last.  I last it out.  I accomplish a work.
Dark tunnel, through which hurtle the visitations,
The visitations, the manifestations, the startled faces.
I am the center of an atrocity.
What pains, what sorrows must I be mothering?

Can such innocence **** and ****?  It milks my life.
The trees wither in the street.  The rain is corrosive.
I taste it on my tongue, and the workable horrors,
The horrors that stand and idle, the slighted godmothers
With their hearts that tick and tick, with their satchels of instruments.
I shall be a wall and a roof, protecting.
I shall be a sky and a hill of good:  O let me be!

A power is growing on me, an old tenacity.
I am breaking apart like the world.  There is this blackness,
This ram of blackness.  I fold my hands on a mountain.
The air is thick.  It is thick with this working.
I am used.  I am drummed into use.
My eyes are squeezed by this blackness.
I see nothing.

SECOND VOICE:
I am accused.  I dream of massacres.
I am a garden of black and red agonies.  I drink them,
Hating myself, hating and fearing.  And now the world conceives
Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.
It is a love of death that sickens everything.
A dead sun stains the newsprint.  It is red.
I lose life after life.  The dark earth drinks them.

She is the vampire of us all.  So she supports us,
Fattens us, is kind.  Her mouth is red.
I know her.  I know her intimately--
Old winter-face, old barren one, old time bomb.
Men have used her meanly.  She will eat them.
Eat them, eat them, eat them in the end.
The sun is down.  I die.  I make a death.

FIRST VOICE:
Who is he, this blue, furious boy,
Shiny and strange, as if he had hurtled from a star?
He is looking so angrily!
He flew into the room, a shriek at his heel.
The blue color pales.  He is human after all.
A red lotus opens in its bowl of blood;
They are stitching me up with silk, as if I were a material.

What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?
I have never seen a thing so clear.
His lids are like the lilac-flower
And soft as a moth, his breath.
I shall not let go.
There is no guile or warp in him.  May he keep so.

SECOND VOICE:
There is the moon in the high window.  It is over.
How winter fills my soul!  And that chalk light
Laying its scales on the windows, the windows of empty offices,
Empty schoolrooms, empty churches.  O so much emptiness!
There is this cessation.  This terrible cessation of everything.
These bodies mounded around me now, these polar sleepers--
What blue, moony ray ices their dreams?

I feel it enter me, cold, alien, like an instrument.
And that mad, hard face at the end of it, that O-mouth
Open in its gape of perpetual grieving.
It is she that drags the blood-black sea around
Month after month, with its voices of failure.
I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string.
I am restless.  Restless and useless.  I, too, create corpses.

I shall move north.  I shall move into a long blackness.
I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman,
Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man
Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack.  I feel a lack.
I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets.
See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks.
I cannot contain it.  I cannot contain my life.

I shall be a heroine of the peripheral.
I shall not be accused by isolate buttons,
Holes in the heels of socks, the white mute faces
Of unanswered letters, coffined in a letter case.
I shall not be accused, I shall not be accused.
The clock shall not find me wanting, nor these stars
That rivet in place abyss after abyss.

THIRD VOICE:
I see her in my sleep, my red, terrible girl.
She is crying through the glass that separates us.
She is crying, and she is furious.
Her cries are hooks that catch and grate like cats.
It is by these hooks she climbs to my notice.
She is crying at the dark, or at the stars
That at such a distance from us shine and whirl.

I think her little head is carved in wood,
A red, hard wood, eyes shut and mouth wide open.
And from the open mouth issue sharp cries
Scratching at my sleep like arrows,
Scratching at my sleep, and entering my side.
My daughter has no teeth.  Her mouth is wide.
It utters such dark sounds it cannot be good.

FIRST VOICE:
What is it that flings these innocent souls at us?
Look, they are so exhausted, they are all flat out
In their canvas-sided cots, names tied to their wrists,
The little silver trophies they've come so far for.
There are some with thick black hair, there are some bald.
Their skin tints are pink or sallow, brown or red;
They are beginning to remember their differences.

I think they are made of water; they have no expression.
Their features are sleeping, like light on quiet water.
They are the real monks and nuns in their identical garments.
I see them showering like stars on to the world--
On India, Africa, America, these miraculous ones,
These pure, small images.  They smell of milk.
Their footsoles are untouched.  They are walkers of air.

Can nothingness be so prodigal?
Here is my son.
His wide eye is that general, flat blue.
He is turning to me like a little, blind, bright plant.
One cry.  It is the hook I hang on.
And I am a river of milk.
I am a warm hill.

SECOND VOICE:
I am not ugly.  I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.
The nurses give back my clothes, and an identity.
It is usual, they say, for such a thing to happen.
It is usual in my life, and the lives of others.
I am one in five, something like that.  I am not hopeless.
I am beautiful as a statistic.  Here is my lipstick.

I draw on the old mouth.
The red mouth I put by with my identity
A day ago, two days, three days ago.  It was a Friday.
I do not even need a holiday; I can go to work today.
I can love my husband, who will understand.
Who will love me through the blur of my deformity
As if I had lost an eye, a leg, a tongue.

And so I stand, a little sightless.  So I walk
Away on wheels, instead of legs, they serve as well.
And learn to speak with fingers, not a tongue.
The body is resourceful.
The body of a starfish can grow back its arms
And newts are prodigal in legs.  And may I be
As prodigal in what lacks me.

THIRD VOICE:
She is a small island, asleep and peaceful,
And I am a white ship hooting:  Goodbye, goodbye.
The day is blazing.  It is very mournful.
The flowers in this room are red and tropical.
They have lived behind glass all their lives, they have been cared for
        tenderly.
Now they face a winter of white sheets, white faces.
There is very little to go into my suitcase.

There are the clothes of a fat woman I do not know.
There is my comb and brush.  There is an emptiness.
I am so vulnerable suddenly.
I am a wound walking out of hospital.
I am a wound that they are letting go.
I leave my health behind.  I leave someone
Who would adhere to me:  I undo her fingers like bandages:  I go.

SECOND VOICE:
I am myself again.  There are no loose ends.
I am bled white as wax, I have no attachments.
I am flat and virginal, which means nothing has happened,
Nothing that cannot be erased, ripped up and scrapped, begun again.
There little black twigs do not think to bud,
Nor do these dry, dry gutters dream of rain.
This woman who meets me in windows--she is neat.

So neat she is transparent, like a spirit.
how shyly she superimposes her neat self
On the inferno of African oranges, the heel-hung pigs.
She is deferring to reality.
It is I.  It is I--
Tasting the bitterness between my teeth.
The incalculable malice of the everyday.

FIRST VOICE:
How long can I be a wall, keeping the wind off?
How long can I be
Gentling the sun with the shade of my hand,
Intercepting the blue bolts of a cold moon?
The voices of loneliness, the voices of sorrow
Lap at my back ineluctably.
How shall it soften them, this little lullaby?

How long can I be a wall around my green property?
How long can my hands
Be a bandage to his hurt, and my words
Bright birds in the sky, consoling, consoling?
It is a terrible thing
To be so open:  it is as if my heart
Put on a face and walked into the world.

THIRD VOICE:
Today the colleges are drunk with spring.
My black gown is a little funeral:
It shows I am serious.
The books I carry wedge into my side.
I had an old wound once, but it is healing.
I had a dream of an island, red with cries.
It was a dream, and did not mean a thing.

FIRST VOICE:
Dawn flowers in the great elm outside the house.
The swifts are back.  They are shrieking like paper rockets.
I hear the sound of the hours
Widen and die in the hedgerows.  I hear the moo of cows.
The colors replenish themselves, and the wet
Thatch smokes in the sun.
The narcissi open white faces in the orchard.

I am reassured.  I am reassured.
These are the clear bright colors of the nursery,
The talking ducks, the happy lambs.
I am simple again.  I believe in miracles.
I do not believe in those terrible children
Who injure my sleep with their white eyes, their fingerless hands.
They are not mine.  They do not belong to me.

I shall meditate upon normality.
I shall meditate upon my little son.
He does not walk. &n

The smile of iceboxes annihilates me.
Such blue currents in the veins of my loved one!
I hear her great heart purr.

From her lips ampersands and percent signs
Exit like kisses.
It is Monday in her mind: morals

Launder and present themselves.
What am I to make of these contradictions?
I wear white cuffs, I bow.

Is this love then, this red material
Issuing from the steele needle that flies so blindingly?
It will make little dresses and coats,

It will cover a dynasty.
How her body opens and shuts --
A Swiss watch, jeweled in the hinges!

O heart, such disorganization!
The stars are flashing like terrible numerals.
ABC, her eyelids say.

From the moment of birth
Our instincts of survival
Bring us down to earth
We dream of the fairy tale
world we wish to live
Hoping to be happy and
learning to give

When we reach our peak
and buld the person we
want to be
Something happens to
our security of survival
and our friends  become
our rivals

Rolling, Rolling, over and over
again
back to the bottom
for another spin

Our Minds unclear of
the person we built to be
Instincts of survival have
taken over you see
control is lost
Survival at any cost

Aimlessly we wander
Hurting the ones we love
Until our thoughts we
launder
The world again becomes
our dove

Repeated over and over
again
Each time the threat of
survival blows in the
wind.

You see we are really
just animals with the
ability to think
but we forget it all
until our survival
becomes almost extinct

Its an understanding
We all need to have
because survival will
dissapate for all mankind
Unless we reach for
the star we were

Septuagint prince scribing on scrivello detail
Emerges from the frogmarch grave of revenants sheepish about ghoulish masquerade
The tribes whittle puckered shibboleths and charismatic vengeance evades
The henpeck of roosters harmonizing sand into grassy knolls of carapace cathedral light
Walks beyond the whimsical despair the conniving conservatories of manufactured fright
Spurned by smokestack confusion above a plastered reconnaissance of abundant life flocking between small awakenings curtailed by fulgurant swelters of blistering white
The spectral dance assumes primordial shades to dampen the windowed elegance of betrayal complicit in the haze
Mojo’s rise and fall with moonshot decades flashing intimacy lived twice barking like a squelched gyrovague relishing the kantikoys of burlesque night
And yet among the bemused stars unbuttoned by the prolixity of the Russia ruse the smear indelible flaunts with decadence in the pleonasm of sluggish articles of flight
How long must the messianic age shelter the nebbich halls of crambazzled piety in science to an upbringing of oligochrome
How many dastardly wernaggles of the rusticated elitism flomp with desultory banquets reminiscent of boiling Rome
Incinerated in an ageless day revived only after a historic lapse of barbarity in the ferule exacted such immeasurable despair
That the prejudice of pride is forever shelved as redundant because the filigrees of geometry only permit curvature in flatness
Convex movements captured in still-framed pillories refract nothing but Blazing Saddles of a caricature full-bloom sun
Yet we marvel at storybook ghosts and the isangelous carapace of marauding instincts forever brave and encaged
Erratic by delivery but sciamachy knows no identifiable age
Scrawny fossarians dig entrenched charnels voraginous with skeletons of brackish regelation enthused by immemorial decay
Must we abridge a hearty ocean in a month’s sublime regaled design of trespasses of unsung heyday spaying its weakest defrocked knight
Armed to the Teeth we seek the terminus of apocalyptic capsules destined for gluttons braving annihilation in the vacuum of orbital planes plain only to the ken of the keenest sight
No we make no petitions in prayer for this Soft Parade of vigor verging on flair
We ransack littoral virtues in nexility bronzed with Stayin’ Alive shoes in remission of staircase blight
Beamish in beatitudes of milquetoast pregnancies of salted Matzah brimming in the yeasts of cesspool emergent from scarecrow metaphors flagrant hauteur gliding on air
Witness the spearhead of revolution in the metagnomy of oracular aubades to future brimstone caverns
Lurking like counterstrokes in revision blackguarded by the feisty prowl of outpaced labtebricole whipsaws of timber readied into foisted brown-brick comestion of elegant emerald errors
Dancing with galactic improvidence concealed by the rigor of lurched liars enthroned with prerogatives of stain-glass adumbration
We parcel up parsecs because clairvoyance among titans is a swank in need of 20/08 visions spectral in the clouds of all prominent registries of memory
Lost to faint delicacies of swift serpents outlasting gnats in the tabernacles of ribald ecbolic promontories on the verge of futile tomorrow pastimes spinsters flummox with slimmerback rigmarole flanged by whinks and escorted by the maskirovka of positive bears in absolute value alone
Yet Enola Gay found its destruction profitable to hominist lore enough to attenuate its evaporation of suffrage in the glint of pervasive remedies to stranded gore
Embanked on the sidelines of conquistador flaunts that a Titanic missive of classy regard found the damsel at the steerage slipping on zalkengur irony the anticlimax of lore
Traipsing fellowship of many a ring is a phony artifice for an ostentation that bellows so loudly when isolated perjury must not whimper but sing
The loudest plaudits afforded to a parallax incumbent white horse in the shadow of Dark Horse occultism a barbed flying wing of the West becoming the king of behest
Scurrilous are many jeers because their similes are baseline just as much as the storged conglomerate behind ensnared rapture looming with less ecstasy and blunt fear remains the kilmarge of simple foresight wrinkled behind the sum of many tears
We await our Creator’s Throne insuperable even with the blandishment of piecemeal craters that are superlative bolides of the weirdest attenuated into the spectrum of eldritch weird
Yet the riches of hobohemia found in “invisible lockets” worn by the travesty of jerseys measuring up to Roadhouse beer
The cartels of citadel cascades built on mountebank fortunes reaped from venal psephology collectively embody the unconscious gamut of javelin cloaks of sardonic sneer
Threnodies written long ago in the Hidden Tracks of sophistry welcome the intermissions of antiquity abridging the donnybrooks of charlatans bossed around by facetious gibes of manicured belletrist humid enough that evaporation itself of rarefied tabacosis has few if any peers
Yet the peerless sketch thrombosis in the oxygeusia of deceptive schadenfreude only to topple jengadangles that glabrous gravity muscles to barely if it all steer
In a vacant reality eager for surrealist bounty the sidereal question of moribund placards supplanted by vibrant living semaphores fixates upon figments of acatalepsy rather than ruddy enumerations of partition despite beloved chalky rudiments filibustering with courtesy rather than jeer
Amicable are ravenous betrayals for chieftains cloffined by warm sapwood integral to equated tantamount mountains festooning firmaments in quaffed delights rigid and keen
The most welcomed blasphemy fragrant with jejune originality celluloid enamors splenetic with sprees of perishable profanity lurking ever more obscene
Regaled in the modest jostle is the forsifamiliation of heterodyne dins of honest applause from the blackguarded periphery among which there are no visible beacons no visible stars
Scarred by diacope enumerated in prescient revelry the trollops of tune and attunement magnetize a riveting weld of seamless geometry that is permeable to ineffable lychgates both porous with prowess and ajar against a golfer’s remediable par
Wizened ghosts flirt with tucked bushes in the forlorn deserts jolted by oasis and flagrant with confection torn asunder by wide-eyed gallantry skipping stones on ataraxia from a distraught afar
That lake of goldmines is scattershot with limey limelight squandered on profligate wrikponds of propinquity but not prolixity in scores and bounties of exoticism in glaikery’s fugitive charm
In proximity there is usucaption but the usufruct of sustainable obelisks to liberty must have the forbearance to bear many witnessed eyes to the Right to Bear Arms
Skirmishes of benighted fracking obsolescence ragged with vitriol and poison-ivy nostalgia flaunt the bromides of algedonic flash over consequences that many disregard
Spiraling with vertiginous pain the scowl of obligation is both seamstress of emblazoned effronteries and the proper reflection of seasoned but not seasonable garb
This barbed quandary riddled with rapacious tendency mixed with myopic bonhomie devours a rickety cacophony of diminutive scopes of ******’s glare to prove each atomic indivisible atrocity a carbonated fulmination heavily barbed
This is all why the killjoys monopolize their gangster vices behind tinted windows and chockablock morality are uxorious bridewells for the bridgewater of garbology sketched by vanity in the outrecuidance of gallionic chasms of an absolute value of firebrand regard
No difference does it make if the recoil is whimpered by hordes of sheep in pretenses of authenticity or whether decapitated delopes emerge from visagist dacoitage snuffed like flavors orbiting self-injury by clockwork towers apace to outlast tertiary bribes for secondary bards
The atocia of freckles in recognition of frail pinnacles summited by daily alpine dilettantist dualisms of polarity are a gullywasher to cleanse and launder indelible regrets carved by aboriginal pottery to memorialize primordial penury
As the slick oleaginous tilts of wicked smart Northeasters swarm the hindsight of Southern Weather afflicted by tempests beleaguered first on recapitulations of Calvary and then deposited evidence upon bourgeoisie
Fumes of the modest flambeaus torching sunken apostasies of hungry spasms of the wind meeting the brusque celerity of the ribald waves rarely etch sublime hint in etch-a-sketch lapses of untimely mobility
Instead that perspicacity of conservatory silence bludgeons Lisbon in the fright before the fall of so many a Phoenix in a foreign land can bear the assaults of the heaved seas
Lambent upon a craggy regularity extinguished by sentinels of the tattered womb for a grimace of prestige by primipara seduction we find no justice of known and knowable terminal disease
Figurative in spoken wisps that predate evaporated concepts of precipitous time the triumph of exalted adoration belongs to hubris but vacant of the prideful decline of crime
To each outspoken verve witnessed on sublunary turf the absolution is nearer to fertility than the craggy soil is to dirt as blemished prowess is a furlough to the sensitive pink tucked manifold beneath each authentic skirt
Liberated by ophelimity but flexed by vicarious pomp in serenade only of hauteur for the hottest we slice and dice a cavern of temptations regardless of enumerated patterns of clearly lopsided dice
We think we live and die but You Only Live Twice in ******* to the oriental bolides of meteoric meteorology preeminent in governing plantations of rice
In jubilant proclamation, I graft from venereal skin a renewed girth of purpose that all enchanted fantasia is a birthright of pleasure more than a vapid drawl of purpose
Glitter bores the scintillation of a denuded naked glory of gore because intimacy is antecedent and consequent to immovable revolutionary procreation of service
To conclude this homily the apothecary in persiflage renounces the role of kilns in both poverty and pottery because his shaken dreams are yelps of a disgusted ornery camaraderie
Listless by oracular dreams of titanic parvenus immune to the sway of tentative croons of Suburban Muse because the grisly subversion of vetust honor that honors not verdict but version of ghastly spools of flimsy epitaphs and not the paragon surgeon is the downfall of a diatribe of petty men
Littering their taradiddles on owleries in overclocked jaundice drowning for purpose among hatcheries of the privvy roosters that own the consequence of audacious pens
Dodgy in interrogation, flummoxed with deracination, isolated by time for time’s recapitulation of surrender in katzenjammer vibes it is time for gossamer servant surfers to borrow nine and hang ten
But the noose of the wednongue nun specializes in puritanical Model Ts for DeLoreans trendsetting years ago because listless lethargy benights the glory that cineastes already won
Teeming on the brink of tomorrow is the progeny of hopeless yesteryear engraved on the iconoclasm of the weak after the next debacle because the Earth after Christ has already borne a Ton
Liturgies revised to reflect corsair trigonometry aimed forever at zephyrs of plight bathe in July 3rd infamy doctored by Generators and Generations before and beyond Walter White menacing the saber with imperious might
Flowered in the nuisance of death is the womb of the arena participant to infinite relapses of contention gladiatorial only when the shunamitism of shanachies sheds serpentine grit for the blench of ligonies of redoubled sight
Towering from the knave inferno of a tramontane elusive cordial imitation of captive citizens of attentive sites the illusion is the vanguard of centuries guarded gingerly by Canada Dry sprites
Rollicking in vehement magpiety attuned to machismo if marginally the sultry philander of naked ruse medicates the charmed Apache Indian on his brief encounters with limousine cruise
Stark in sunken destination glimpsing coal-fire recursive ironies the cloned subversion is a golden calf so effete because it never moos about instinctual muse relegated by twin terrors riddled with sparkplug truce
Limited by scopes enlarged by scales mired in funereal pyres to rigmarole sensationalism worthy of nativist coercion and pivoted lyres the riddle of terminus remains an acquiescent scoff, cough and quaff that never expires
It reaches planetary dread of vast distances regaled against gambits of the spread so the richest sourdough appeases the riper vipers of the nested bed
Recalcitrant with frugal uxorious creed the leader of esquivalience is the headless horseman of innumerable tractions but no mouth to feed
He digests the gallop of the gallant interregnum specious in caitiff ploys and the recessive allele of commiserations against the piety of apolaustic joy because rambunctious speed always attracts a resignation professed from the tailspin of a crass voyage of ludic greed
Tricksters boast of passionate lubrications of finessed bread recocted from useless toasts glowering with insipid pallor as heat and humidity reckon billows of hype congregated more in cisterns of apostasy for remark than a marksman headshot of a Head Hunter wed tightly to a pregnable visions of proactive Ghost
Recidivism and time have a vendetta against verdant drolleries coated by waxen plenilune accordions rampant with polyacoustic rhymes
The tridents of mercurial weather bent on the ineffable vacillations of whether are the brazen opponent of Sterling fatherhood of life’s only father the clockwork animation of a living patronage of eternal existence cobbled from immutable time
To the glory of the Father the sun shades its whimpers and the moon alights as the frontispiece of nocturnal revisions to the New York Times but the hues of rocketed ingenuity coax the ingratiated few to the laureates of genius reckoned with both designation and superlative artifacts of pristine design
Haunted by Green-Light Politics for Greener-Eyed Ladies masquerading in star-crossed tomes of existential dread of lollygagged playful mischief tucked in the coach as he leads his team with sophrosyne feel-good invictive treacle we witness the fumiducts of fortune blitzing Hail Mary contrition with earnest specialty in defense of offensive precision
Games won by the squirrel are outnumbered by the stars in the heavens flagrantly devoid of specialized electricity enough to encapsulate the ommateum of collectivized insights found only in the most evolved sequence of cell division
Incarcerated by the scrappy schlep of bad beats and bronzed chariots roiled by the momentum of angular spears we seek oracular transcendence that cements decades into the span of days that portend the deliverance of future years from past and present fears
Presiding as proctor in the redacted exoneration of crash-course pilots glowering with the effluvium of recensed perdition the heyday of one becomes the mayday of anarchy tested only by the alacrity of the summation of its beloved yet maligned cheers
Against a prosperity hard-won by earnest husbandry commandeered by gammerstang notoriety spawning the recrimination of star power into centupled peers negligent of zero-sum opinionation wagered by Country Club fraternities embedded in the taxonomy of wilted hackumber for hegiras minimized by outcry but cemented by Dear Johns’ twinged with sultry pleonexia in taxed tears
So with the whipsaw of the individual between the collective funnel and the idiosyncratic insubordination that amplifies outcry galvanized throes of insemination built on cross-pollination is melliferous to a pretense of alchemy outstretched to sidereal wonder
Hardest to guess is intimacy clothed in Platonic virtues crumbling because puritanical pilgrimage is appraised as a joyous thunder for a abnegation from all potential blunders
To wager such a life is a depredation of the abundance that John breathes as a ceremonial birthright cast aside by latent regrets stampeding the realm of nosocomial reflections of the pallor of a lurid squander
So we are left to bemuse the decrepit bodewash of realism taken to such a virulent extreme it leaves few artifacts of nostalgia to croon about and ponder and fewer abstractions to yield to manicures of elegant troponder
Diminutive sinews in the intertesselations of heft profess a fidelity of notoriety carving life before and after death
Unsung by the beadledom of the usucaption of exotic tailored musician brutes upon my landlocked assault of chryselephantine usufruct I lampoon nescience as it lurks in murky graveyards of anoegenetic zombies covered in thick pigments of piggish soot
Yet this fuliginous bronteum of warped clarity transfixed by the ulterior wednongues of atrocious spans of provenance jilting providence makes betting interests of rivalry outcomes harder to win earnest roots
The trees of the gamboled skittish resignation of checkered blinks obscuring the curtailed discernment of bedizened slogans of future campaigns yet distasteful in ornery churning the bootstrapped tie their tethered laces to their acquired boots
Barnstorming through afflicted spandrels of abeyance shepherded by notions of public dereliction by imperium of centrobaric centripetal philters of concubine rhymes I surge beneath cordial flonky redhibition because of redshorts in estimable traction cemented by supernal design
Weak in luster my potent pollination for synergistic aplomb evades the fringe of corrugated affections mounted upon quixotic escapades of jockeyed statistics flourishing by reticence rather than frazzling the prolix emulation filibustering the mundane ignorance but garnering the harvest of the plevisable sequence from prime to prime indivisible by liberty alone or complicit with cadence sublime
Finishing the sermons of modern apostasy to a gallant cause my laments outnumber the muzzles belonging to the quorum of begrudged applause in the rawest spectacle of unheralded genius clawing insistently at the heart of electric gravity
The nuances of plausible nuisance bicker in emerald harlots of the tantamount nature of derelict frikmag to calculated prosodemic solidarity around insanity because the vein of the golden ore should see ivoride as nullification and inanity
We all stoop on counterfeit stencils of pretense hearkening a clairvoyant sun to droop for closer inspection but detective remonstrance is outmoded by dreary witless defections
Thus the drawl scrawled by the genius flonky in gadzookerie but gilded in rhapsodies of ineffable cadence fighting orthodoxy to a relegated draw sketches the outline of the special talents of lying claws
Because stipulated in the vast oversight that predicates reprisals of retches glazing in obtuse effronteries with eccedentesiast odontoloxia we witness the corrosion of race and gender into pontificating audits of nomadic treason in a fortress militarized by niche applause
Trickling from repcrevel faucets implicit degradation is a casual casualty of an abbreviated motive gestured in ponderous stupidity to distract abiding legislation into the giggled gaggle of tinsellated glitter
Fatuous by vacuums of gaudy prizes worthy only of token motions rather than locomotive strains of virulent and compassionate respect lapsed on vigors of vehement regret is a sing-song ridicule of a still-framed pillory erected as the obstacle that gouges the riddles of impediment and deprives the luxury of preferential emolument siphoned off to lurid jeers of mockery propaganda sizzling in the cauldrons of tilted marginalization
So we witness the faded declension of the hubris of fair-weather camaraderie as a flux dispersal of invidious buoyant bloviated streaks of temporal grit into inverted revelry never shared by the proper ubiquity of streams of personal recompense for plodding fragments of invasion
If I veer away from bickering cackles of denounced preeminence swiveled to face the shadows upon the great cavern of insuperable bounds of fickle human ignorance I deplore the vaunted toadies that shrink my shadow and diminish my viable conceptual and vibrant footprints
Few extinct creatures know the annihilation of petty fame quaffed on Whiskey Bars I never met because the insipid banal pleonasms of restructured irony grimace at my complexion as the scent of the game alerts the foibles of a champion begotten once before as a shark-tank prince
Livid is my grief in the aborning moral quandary of sunken priority overlapping with piebald skeumorphs of retches of blinkered allegiance faltering prior to the primary day of my true awakening because the completion of nesiote subterfuge  rusts on creaky hinges of noncommittal regressions of pointed but pointless deluge
I spar with the augury of irrelevance with a five-pointed star bequeathing rigid but plentiful provision to assist with more than a petty dime of tithe to a 20/20 flash of perfect prescience and hallowed vision
The eve of all destruction is the lollygag of subordinate squawks redacting convenient priorities on the slowpoke walks through teenage immaturity found in the infamous “talk” that the world is governed by evasion in supremacy rather than by the bywords of the perennial stocks in sublime stalks
This nation perishes with my visionary clarity because the bifocal constraints of delimited defenestration remands my custody beneath ****** upheaval documented by useless historians of deliberation in gaffe and ammunition for agitprop flickering away the aubades of praise for the stilted pretense of sclerotic values inflexible to authorship thus scuttled by crowdsourced dictatorship
How sad a spate that the welters of sciamachy hide behind the glaring shadow of immeasurable genius for an unwarranted earwig to steal the echoes of my thunder and poison the servitude of the minions to companionship to highlight aggrieved infamy over walloping feats of refrain found in an isolated rather than protracted celebrity
The guilt of the reproachable beams through the frikmag of tyrannical bouts of circular wernaggle as I carve spherical reckoning that outstretches in all viable directions so that “The Mailman” and the Male Man both succeed in historic insurrection
Flashy benumbed brutish ferules of ferocious dainty dances with an arbitrary cage highlighted among a voiceless heyday for an auditorium which perceives insanity more dangerous than inanity is a profane stipulation by wrinkled mediagenic hubris which scours planetary limitations for excuse to recourse and recourse to excuse
We find marvels in subtlety finicky on the apothegms of heterochrony divergent even further from syndication as the regimented nuances of abuse become plucky daredevils that cozen robust vital sapwood from anglers seizing by seizure the roundabout logic of the innumerable minority characterized forever obtuse
I writhe in delicate contortions of flexed directional bypass surmounting orthodromic velocities capering with the anenometers that spar against spangled enthusiasm only to become an anointed slave of the flagging moral resolve fulminating a huffed crusade with silentiums of false asylum for true achievement brusque against any resourceful tempest scurrying the hidebound illusion of pandemonium for scrappy shenanigans of vergers and emptied pews griping with the dearth of the day-to-day despite the known tomorrow
We cannot affix primary focus upon constellated wasms of puckered abstention borrowed from a maskirovka of secret hedonism wed to many vices among wives but deprived of sacrosanct remuneration for abiding expenses yet an atoll upon a continent decisive in its aborning revolution
Ribald wiseacres of a jovial dismay flanged on rectiserial exaggerations of sebastomania is a stranded frigate of a fugitive escapism wandering with nomadic insistence against cosseted blackguard of assertion without plenipotentiary verdicts against the suborned crater of overstated flimsy truculence in sardonic dissolution
In trespass of a reservation of recoiled tender of tutelage proctoring unseemly haggardly refuse to creak into noisome and noisy cacophony armed by centurions of merciless scorn that lackadaisical winter belies the meteoric riches of autumn mainour fungible with the retches of remorseful decay dangling retreat above entreaty for exasperated wednongues lacking curiosity or the backbite of counterfeit engastrimyths seeding an unknowing complicity to fallacy forked over by chiefs and chefs to an amounted dubiety reserves the armaments of glib sedition for inopportune blacklists by a whitewashed Listerine amenable to launder travestime into oversight rather than belabor banal graft upon the agelasts of a toilsome operose labor to trivialize Herculean monuments to creativity as backwater residence of restive plucky percurrent revivals of infamy as a primary thorn rather than a secondary abreaction
Sentinels swift to the expedited squalor intrepid in sclerotic simpers of renowned defalcation bludgeoned by the tridents of harmonized trauma healing the brayed complaint while regaining the quixotic statute of plevisable mobility belongs to the froward counterpunch to the flippant underminnow of savagery yet among noble personage a blip on furloughs rather than a singed diacope perishing in Wasting Light for denuded darkness to supplant the vacated stage of ironic upbringing bartered from a treasury of obsolete wasms of trivial shadows in the amounted lineage of time.
Elected by the purblind fudged cadge of intransigent solidarity behind unhinged proclamations of lewd lunacy the reset of wibble-wabble and conflagrations of trenchant visibility will cloud the cloudiest tempest with hurricane-force devastation by the healing stripes of the piebald idiosyncrasy of gerrymandered defamation failing where insular regeneration outlasts hamartia and blinkered foibles of girouettism to pillory the excess but not transmogrify the whittled progress of seminal generativity unbounded by harped lyres of discord for secret concords of select femicide
With outstretched hands I point to the tapestry of the Heavens as eternal folksy witness that to endear the temperance of time bullishly roaring on the laureates of prolific servitude to the malleable substance of capered argument the enigmatic punctuation outweighs the baragnosis of miscreant opportune glares at personal prospect for aggrieved sockdolagers of redstrall over the filigrees of innate geometry to cackle above the shouted gnash and the dissoluble squirms of blackened cremation of living memories into insipid fracking of sapwood caitiffs flowing on the motion of discredit rather than honor in valuable endeavor for future genuflection
Totems value me as much as they stalk grazed hinderbaggle of cosmetic devolution of ragged popcorn theatrics in the desuetude of normative ethics beneath the carcass of rotten dastardly cowardice brandishing an ulterior discretion beneath the level of the lowest stoop of any breed founded on loyalty verging into flagrant snipers of integrity for the integral unshakable paragon of broad illumination the guidepost for many spectral truths overshadowed by one miserly fool flummoxing with albatross without the overhang  of pluvious integrity shepherding his hauteur in zig-zagged wallops rather than buoyant serenades
Thus entrenched in juicy poignant barricades against virulent spawn of the katzenjammers of squawking femicide I spout the blossom, bequeath the gift, renounce the delusion and form a formidable bastion against depredated valleys blemished from sight by intolerable patches of darkened verdure hiding from commonwealth perception the pearl of ecumenical salvation swimming in the naked tongues of honest profession dancing with conventional demarcated demerits of Rimbaud ramshackle deracination as a humdrum belittled squander of a prop of craven filibuster rather than beavers outsmarting the delignated destruction of habitat because of outright distaste for plucky individuation above the squalor of relativism in minor octaves of gnashed betrayal rigged by hamsters rather than owned by the men trigger-happy with rat race motivation only to the servitude of degrees rather than plausible recovery embedded into the fabric of fickle society
Hidebound tomes fishing for destruction but grappling with the enormity of the plagued pitfall of ceramic skirmish with brittle conscience emerge with epincion rather than sulk in brooded hyperbole of convenient drapes of flocks postulating irrelevance clearly in the light of the truest day frolicking with gigantic swaddles of curated support etching masterpieces of traipse into the frescades of future calenture beyond the petty misestimation of hemitery politics
Thus the weapon serves two masters of row rather than regatta and the besieged rankles the testy predicament to a teased poetry riveted by years of rhapsody rather than moments of tomfoolery emergent victorious rather than dilapidated by what-could-have-been chary brinkmanship on the precipice of modern sacrilege
To instruct the herds of men to hoard and the wisdom of the wise to circulate that apothegm of reclamation owns superlative traction fundamental to whimsical festivity even forsaken on a churlish masquerade outmantled by frenetic activity famigerated by the true Richter Scale of public fanfaronade because justice is truth and only in germane truth beyond germ scares will decrepit scarecrows demolish their Fear Factor even when the gullible squirm for nexility on bounded continents rather than novantique frontiers
Conscription demarches for assembly beyond relegation and celebrity above frays of discordant rumination feasting advenient rather than cherishing internal and integral the virtuoso wrabble of residue generations churning wheels of acceleration rather than quibbling extinguished vitality as principal complaint exercised in negligent abodes of facetious barnacles to outlandish freckles in the majestic pulchritude of a Titanic salvation beyond and considering the curglaff of sunken resources pitted to my registry by slot-machine audiences incognizant of brittle whittled henpecks of adoring truth and perdurable verve
We sink and die by destructive tongues but abide and live by righteous exemplary prowess capable of scraping the towering canvass of the firmament and the retches of the deepest sea inhabited by any curiosity worthy of emolument
So in token liturgy I decry sidelong cursory squandered affronts that drive the Jehus madcap with fractious celerities of formal destitution rampant on flonky menace rather than modern hypertrophy
In The End, we see triumph in every nuance and bristling concord with every perspiration of ennobled effort truckling into serrated selachostomous and fractious bromides of wrecking-ball fashionistas fumigating cultural pederasty with subtle bailiwick but ragged travesties of taxidermy celluloid
Marvel in-between the serenade and grandstand and cull the turnverein of triumph from banished evasive rundles of the outlasted calculus to neuter the estranged and to estrange the atocia of vibrant surreal vibes no stranger to an alien hand in a desolate world.

As Kenya lay on the floor at Club Envy with her lungs burning and filling up with blood from being shot by an unknown person she thought her life would never end like this.  Kenya's tears started to flow as she thought of the years she spent slithering with snakes.  Her job at the BNB Bank made it easy to launder money for the Black Crime Syndicate.  It was six years ago in the month of June that her life took a downward spiral.
Upset at the thought of being late for work Kenya floored the gas pedal.  As she passed by the slow moving drivers weaving in and out of traffic Kenya hoped she didn't get a ticket.  I just had to stay up late watching the marathon of Funny Man.  Now I got to race the clock and pray I don't get stopped the police thought Kenya as she sped past the other drivers.  As Kenya pulled into the BNB Bank's parking lot she checked the time.
"It's 7:55am.  I made it within five minutes" said Kenya.
Kenya got out of her car and walked through the bank's glass doors.  As time passed the employees of BNB got the bank ready for the public.  One of the three people that arrived at the time of opening was a new face.  Mmmmmm yummy thought Kenya as she walked up to the tall light skinned man.
"Hello sir how may I help you?" asked Kenya as she eyed the man up and down.
"My name is Malik Maxwell.  I would like to open a checking and a savings account" answered the tall light skinned man.
"Mr. Maxwell please follow me to my office" said Kenya.
As Kenya and Malik sat in Kenya's office filling out papers Kenya made it up in here mind that she would get to know Malik on a personal level.
After a day's work Kenya got behind the wheel of her BMW and started he drive home.  On her way home Kenya called her best friend Jewel Stonewall.
"Hello Jewel how are you?" asked Kenya with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand holding her cellphone.
"I'm doing great Kenya.  What's up?" answered Jewel as she did one of her client's hair at her salon the Golden Scissors.
"Are we still on for Saturday?" asked Kenya.
With a confused look on her face Jewel asked
"Is the day Friday already?"
"Yeah girl what day did you think it was?" responded Kenya.
"To tell you the truth Kenya I thought the day was Thursday" said Jewel.
"No Jewel it's Friday.  I'm glad I have a friend who owns a hair salon" said Kenya.
"You better be thankful.  I'll talk with you later Kenya" said Jewel.
"Ok bye Jewel" said Kenya.
Kenya Ayanna Night was a plain looking black woman in her 30's who lived a very plain life.  She always looked forward to Saturday.  A day she would spend at the Golden Scissors getting her hair done and talking with Jewel Stonewall her childhood friend.

written by Keith Edward Baucum

Even though the rhythm
of your footsteps has left
in my mind echoes resounding,
I did not so much as flinch
when I heard you breathing
in between beats.

I'm sorry for shuddering, but
blood has boiled
my nerves numb
muddied everything I see
dried out my tongue
and though I launder
your shirts every week,

I still don't know what you smell like.

As Olive Spectrum lay on the floor at Club Envy with her lungs burning and filling up with blood from being shot by an unknown person.  She thought her life would never end like this.  Olive's tears started to flow as she thought of the years she spent slithering with snakes.  Her job at the BNB Bank made it easy to launder money for the Black Crime Syndicate.  It was six years ago in the month of June that her life took a downward spiral.  Upset at the thought of being late for work Olive floored the gas pedal.  As she passed by the slow moving drivers weaving in and out of traffic.  Olive hoped she didn't get a ticket.  I just had to stay up late watching the marathon of Funny Man.  Now I got to race the clock and pray I don't get stopped by the police.  Thought Olive as she sped past the other drivers.  As Olive Spectrum pulled into the BNB parking lot she checked the time.  "It's 7:55am.  I made it within five minutes" said Olive.  Getting out of her car Olive walked through the bank's glass doors.  As the time passed the employees of BNB got the bank ready for the public.  One of the three people that arrived at the time of opening was a new face.  Mmmmm yummy thought Olive as she walked up to the tall light skin man.  "Hello sir how can I help you?" asked Olive as she eyed the man up and down.  "My name is Akurra Wings.  I would like to open a checking and a savings account" answered the tall light skin man.  "Mr. Wings please follow me to my office" said Olive.  As Olive and Akurra sat in Olive's office filling out papers Olive made it up in her mind that she would get to know Akurra on a personal level.  After a day's work Olive got behind the wheel of her BMW and started her drive home.  On her way home Olive called her best friend Jewel StoneWall.  "Hello Jewel how are you?" asked Olive with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand holding her cellphone.  "I'm doing great Olive.  What's up?" answered Jewel StoneWall as she did one of her client's hair at her salon the Golden Scissors.  "Are we still on for Saturday?" asked Olive.  With a confused look on her face Jewel ask "Is the day Friday already?"  "Yeah girl what day did you think it was?" responded Olive.  "To tell you the truth Olive I thought the day was Thursday" said Jewel.  "No Jewel it's Friday.  I'm glad I have a friend who owns a hair salon" said Olive.  "You better be thankful.  I'll talk with you later Olive" said Jewel.  "Ok bye Jewel" said Olive.  Olive Spectrum was a plain looking black woman in her 30's who lived a very plain life.  She always looked forward to Saturday.  A day she would spend at the Golden Scissor getting her hair done and talking with Jewel StoneWall her childhood friend.
Written by Keith Edward Baucum

GREEN Chapter One

As Kenya lie on the floor at Club Envy with her lungs burning and filling up with blood from being shot by an unknown person she thought her life would never end like this.  Kenya tears started to flow as she thought of the years she spent silthering with snakes.  Her job at the BNB Bank made it easy to launder money for the Black Crime Syndicate.  It was six years ago in the month of June that her life took a downward spiral.
Upset at the thought of being late for work Kenya floored the gas pedal.  As she passed by the slow moving drivers weaving in and out of traffic Kenya hoped she didn't get a ticket.  I just had to stay up late watching the marathon of Funny Man.  Now I got to race the clock and pray I don't get stopped by the police thought Kenya as she sped past the other drivers.  As Kenya pulled into the BNB Bank parking lot she checked the time.
"It's 7:55a.m.  I made it within five minutes."
Kenya got out of her car and walked through the bank's glass doors.
As time passed the employees of BNB got the bank ready for the public.  One of the three people that arrived at the time of opening was a new face.  Mmmmmm yummy thought Kenya as she walked up to the tall light skinned man.
"Hello sir how may I help you?" asked Kenya as she eyed the man up and down.
"My name is Malik Maxwell Williams.  I would like to open a checking and savings account" answered the tall light skinned man.
"Mr. Williams please follow me to my office."
As Kenya and Malik sat in Kenya's office filling out papers Kenya made it up in her mind that she would get to know Malik on a personal level.  After a days work Kenya got behind the wheel of her red BMW and started her drive home.  On her way home.  On her way home Kenya called her best friend Jewel Stonewall.
"Hello Jewel how are you?" asked Kenya with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand holding her cellphone.
"I'm doing great Kenya.  What's up?" answered Jewel Stonewall as she did one of her client's hair at her salon the Golden Scissors.
"Are we still on for Saturday?"
With a confused look on her face Jewel asked
"Is the day Friday already?"
"Yeah girl what day did you think it was?"
"To tell you the truth Kenya I thought the day was Thursday."
"No Jewel it's Friday.  I'm glad I have a friend who owns a hair salon."
"You better be thankful.  I'll talk with you later Kenya."
"Ok by Jewel."
Kenya Ayanna Night was a plain looking black woman in her 30's who lived a very plain life.  She always looked forward to Saturday.  A day she would spend at the Golden Scissors getting her hair done and talking with Jewel Stonewall her childhood friend.


Written by: Keith Edward Baucum

"Rough", a polite way of expressing my apprehension from the start, couldn't have known I was shaking for all the wrong (Reasons) that you left are in surplus this season; flipping vowels upside down along with my smile, and faded hues stand out the most now;  this pale blue follows me but that seems so irrelevant most days. Years pass and as my eyes grow feeble, I see more, more, more, and you are the greatest beauty I have ever seen, your fragile chest and broken bones more than memories for me to launder between the parts of my brain that still give a ****. I replaced the decay of my spirit with rotted lungs, with magick however alleged, ritual a key, components fine like the filigree that lined my illusions, dramatic tone and teeth marks make me quiver, alchemical bonds between the ground and I, afire is the sky and my insides turn bone white and glowing under your moon.
Stop spinning ...
The feeling of overflowing consumes me, and abundance isn't always preferred, to tell you the truth I kind of miss all of my innards being contained within me. But each day I feel a little less invisible and it gets that much easier to deal with this (hole) thing, forget the flashing moments of misery  in which I could suffocate myself because it's hard to complain, I must admit I've created every crevice and ****** crack that you see on my body with my own devices, like trying to mold clay with scissorhands; This expulsion may be near unpalatable but it seems to me the only thing that helps me forget, truth is I don't know why I haven't yet; just chaotic noise like the raps that flowed from the lips of the artist that I wasn't paying any attention to at all that night at that coffee shop.

Tommorrow is on my calendar
as is every day next week.
I have interviews, appointments,
Dinners at which I'll speak.

I'll make some time for family
and writing ,I suppose.
I may find time to barbecue
and to launder my work clothes.

When evening comes I'll settle back
with a glass of Pinot noir.
I'm a transient immortal,
I'm on loan here from a star.

The future is a game;
against ourselves we play
We act as if we still have left
forever and a day.

In truth we all are transients
For just this moment free.
Self observing stardust
poised t'wixt two eternities

As Olive Spectrum lay on the floor at Club Envy with her lungs burning and filling up with blood from being shot by an unknown person she thought her life would never end like this.  Olive's tears started to flow as she thought of the years she spent slithering with snakes.  Her job at the BNB Bank made it easy to launder money for the Black Crime Syndicate.
It was six years ago in the month of June that her life took a downward spiral.
Upset at the thought of being late for work Olive floored the gas pedal.  As she passed by the slow moving drivers weaving in and out of traffic Olive hoped she didn't get a ticket.  I just had to stay up late watching the marathon of Funny Man.  Now I got to race the clock and pray I don't get stopped by the police thought Olive as she sped past by the other drivers.  As Olive Spectrum pulled into the BNB Bank's parking lot she checked the time.  "It's 7:55am.  I made it within five minutes" said Olive.   Olive got out of her car and walked through the bank's glass doors.
As time passed the employees of BNB got the bank ready for the public.   One of the three people that arrived at the time of opening was a new face.  Mmmmmm yummy thought Olive as she walked up to the tall light skinned man.  "Hello sir how may I help you?" asked Olive as she eyed the man up and down.  "My name is Akurra Wings.  I would like to open a checking and a savings account" answered the tall light skinned man.  "Mr. Wings please follow me to my office" said Olive.  As Olive and Akurra sat in Olive's office filling out papers Olive made it up in her mind that she would get to know Akurra on a personal level.  
After a day's work Olive got behind the wheel of her BMW and started her drive home.  On her way home Olive called her best friend Jewel Stone Wall.  "Hello Jewel how are you?" asked Olive with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand holding her cellphone."  "I'm doing great Olive.  What's up?" answered Jewel Stone Wall as she did one of her client's hair at her salon the Golden Scissors.  "Are we still on for Saturday?" asked Olive.  With a confused look on her face Jewel asked "Is the day Friday already?"  "Yeah girl what day did you think it was?" responded Olive.  "To tell you the Truth Olive I thought the day was Thrusday" said Jewel.  "No Jewel it's Friday.  I'm glad I have a friend who owns a hair salon" said Olive.  "You better be thankful.  I'll talk with you later Olive" said Jewel.  "Ok bye Jewel" said Olive.  
Olive Spectrum was a plain looking black woman in her 30's who lived a very plain life.  She always looked forward to Saturday.  A day she would spend at the Golden Scissors getting her hair done and talking with Jewel Stone Wall her childhood friend.

Written by Keith Edward Baucum

As Kenya lay on the floor at Club Envy with her lungs burning and filling up with blood from being shot by an unknown person she thought her life would never end like this.  Kenya's tears started to flow as she thought of the years she spent slithering with snakes.  Her job at the BNB Bank made it easy to launder money for the Black Crime Syndicate.  It was six years ago in the month of June that her life took a downward spiral.  
Upset at the thought of being late for work Kenya floored the gas pedal.  As she passed by the slow moving drivers weaving in and out of traffic Kenya hoped she didn't get a ticket.  I just had to stay up late watching the marathon of FunnyMan.  Now I got to race the clock and pray I don't stopped by the police thought Kenya as she past by the other drivers. As Kenya pulled into the BNB Bank's parking lot she checked the time.
"It's 7:55am.  I made it within five minutes" said Kenya.
Kenya got out of her car and walked through the bank's glass doors.  As time passed the employees of BNB got the bank ready for the public.  One of the three people that arrived at the time of opening was a new face.  Mmmmmm yummy thought Kenya as she walked up to the tall light skinned man.
"Hello sir how may I help you?" asked Kenya as she eyed the man up and down.
"My name is Malik Maxwell.  I would like to open a checking and a savings account" answered the tall light skinned man.
"Mr. Maxwell please follow me to my office" said Kenya.

As Kenya and Malik sat in Kenya's office filling out papers Kenya made it up in her mind that she would get to know Malik on a personal level.
After a day's work Kenya got behind the wheel of her BMW and started her drive home.  On her way home Kenya called her best friend Jewel Stonewall.
"Hello Jewel how are you?" asked Kenya with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand holding her
cellphone.
"I'm doing great Kenya.  What's up?" asked Jewel as she did one of her client's hair at her salon the Golden Scissors.
"Are we still on for Saturday?" asked Kenya.
"Is the day Friday already" said Jewel.
"Yeah girl what day did you think it was?" responded Kenya.
"To tell you the truth Kenya I thought the day was Thursday" said Jewel.
"No Jewel it's Friday.  I'm glad I have a friend who owns a hair salon" said Kenya.
"You better be thankful.  I'll talk with you later Kenya" said Jewel.
"Ok bye Jewel" said Kenya.
Kenya Ayanna Night was a plain looking black woman in her 30's who lived a very plain life.  She always looked forward to Saturday.  A day she would spend at the Golden Scissors getting her hair done and talking with Jewel Stonewall her childhood friend.

Written by Epic

Calm on the surface
Do not show signs of panic
Launder pants later

The eternal trench has been dug,
Each side gazes upon a day's destruction.
A battle where neither side shrugs
A battle built upon corruption.
The fight - for North Vespucci
The land that prospers from war
Each side sets skillful schemes too cheat
And they surely settle the score.

A voice, a rifle
Like bullets - piercing a party's heart
Accountants launder loot - leaving us stifled
Like the master tactician - Commanding an army smart.
Ideas recycled;
Luring unsuspecting souls in reach
Only to promise the unobtainable
Through their leader's speech.

Cowering in fear, neutrals despised,
Don't believe the mystic mirages of which they speak
Leaving us disenfranchised,
We are who they consider "weak."
For "weak" I may be,
But disenfranchised - I will not!
With a sincere soul I speak,
We must move to stop the blood clot.

For Weak I am,
But strong I will become.
Nobody gives a ****,
But my voice will be a victorious one!

Step over the threshold
And through the front hall
Full of shoes and possibilities.
Come to a kitchen table
Able to shed the cold
And unroll your soul
Against it's worn and warm knots,
Flavoured with cookies and coffee mugs
And echoes of late chats and early plans
and sneak-behind hugs.
Let the love that pools here soak
Into your marrow
Put aside tomorrow
And so launder your heart clean of fear.
Our home is your home,
Come pull up your chair.

You think trying would get you a good outcome,
but **** no my efforts are meaningless.
Fed up with the accusations and verbal abuse.
Just pick and choose if it's me or really you. Tired of the fighting, expired of the lying.
Get a grip, and don't let loose.
You'll come to fall with no feet to land on, you'll hide and clap in applause.  
Stop all the negatory, you just hold me back. Too quick to be the one to attack.
I lost defense, and you're just too senseless.
Make some ****** sense of yourself and I'll make some cents for myself.
You're the back door rug that keeps making me trip,
if I just  stood up maybe I could dip.
Yes I used lie.
Yes I used to make you unhappy.
Kept coming back and wouldn't cut me slack.
Realization and consideration got me to change my act.
Accept the facts of my mistakes.
Don't bring it up but you don't know how to shut the **** up.
You hang onto the past, but I hang onto you. The truth of your father is unspeakable,
I'm sorry he did that, it's unbelievable.
You could leave us alone so I could slit his throat.
That's besides the fact of me trying to show you.
That I care and I always try to show support. Don't you dare put your hands on me or expect a letter from court.
Cut me short when I speak, on the outside your weak.
Inside you're so beautiful, I wouldn't trade you for diamonds.
The truth here is to be told, I'm so serious about our relationship,
don't hesitate and I try to get you to work before your late.
I launder your clothes, and fold all the fabrics.
I stay and wait for you at home
When you could be gone at the casino.
Blow up some bucks, I could careless for these jealous *****.
I'm not your property, but I can say your mine.
I won the lottery, it was everything no one else could give me.
The little things like coming to see me every night, the miles, the highs and the lows.
Not giving up makes me not give up.
I gave up the truth, and I nearly puked speaking of it.
I love you Mon Amour, you're everything I could ask for.
You make me sore for your love, I can't sugarcoat it either.

As Olive Spectrum lay on the floor at Club Envy with her lungs burning and filling up with blood from being shot by an unknown person.  She thought her life would never end like this.  Olive's tears started to flow as she thought of the years she spent slithering with snakes.  Her job at the BNB Bank made it easy to launder money for the Black Crime Syndicate.  It was six years ago in the month of June that her life took a downward spiral.  Upset at the thought of being late for work Olive floored the gas pedal.  As she passed by the slow moving drivers weaving in and out of traffic.  Olive hoped she she didn't get a ticket.  I just had to stay up late watching the marathon of Funny Man.  Now I got to race the clock and pray I don't get stopped by the police.  Thought Olive as she sped past the other drivers.  As Olive Spectrum pulled into the BNB parking lot she checked the time.  "It's 7:55am.   I made it within five minutes" said Olive.  Getting out of her car Olive walked through the bank's glass doors.  As time passed the employees of BNB got the bank ready for the public.  One of the three people that arrived at the time of opening was a new face.   Mmmmm yummy thought Olive as she walked up to the tall light skin man.  "Hello sir how may I help you?" asked Olive as she eyed the man up and down.  "My name is Akurra Wings.  I would like to open a checking and a savings account" answered the tall light skin man.  "Mr. Wings please follow me to my office" said Olive.  As Olive and Akurra sat in Olive's office filling out papers Olive made it up in her mind that she would get to know Akurra on a personal level.  After a day's work Olive got behind the wheel of her BMW and started her drive her home.  On her way home Olive called her best friend Jewel StoneWall.  "Hello Jewel how are you?" asked Olive with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand holding her cellphone.  "I'm doing great Olive.  What's up?" answered Jewel StoneWall as she did one of her client's hair at her salon the Golden Scissors.  "Are we still on for Saturday?" asked Olive.  With a confused look on her face Jewel asks "Is the day Friday already?"  "Yeah girl what day did you think it was?" responded Olive.  "To tell you the truth Olive I thought the day was Thrusday" said Jewel.  "No Jewel it's. Friday.  I'm glad I have a friend who owns a hair salon" said Olive.  "You better be thankful.  I'll talk with you later Olive" said Jewel.  "Ok bye Jewel" said Olive.  Olive Spectrum was a plain looking black woman in her 30's who lived a very plain life.  She always looked forward to Saturday.  A day she would spend at the Golden Scissors getting her hair done and talking with Jewel StoneWall her childhood friend.

Written by Keith Edward Baucum.

Don't solve my problems
Don't wipe my nose
Don't wash my dishes
Don't launder my clothes
Don't wipe the counters
Don't clean the floors
Don't vacuum the rug
I can't take anymore

Just Love Me.

I’m wearing your old jacket. Remember? The one you used to fish in. The one with the tear in the silk of the right-hand pocket. You used to tease me. You used to say that this jacket kept your loose change safe from my chocolate addiction. You being left-handed; me being right.

I bury my face in the nap of the moleskin collar. My nostrils fill with your scent - stale cologne, a hint of woodsmoke, and...fish. More disconcerting than unpleasant, it’s all I can do not to choke on my memories of you. Of me and you. Together.

'Tell me, how can I be, now that you alone are gone and I am left behind?'

I feel like I’ve been abandoned in a foreign capital with nothing more than the clothes I stand up in and a wallet full of the wrong kind of currency. The day is drawing to a close. My luggage has disappeared with the exhaust from the bus which took off before I could catch my breath and explain my dilemma - that I’m not sure where I’m going or even where I’ve been. Lately.

Maybe a kindness will point me in the right direction. An open-all-hours diner on an inner-city corner, snuggled in between the high-rise office blocks. Maybe I’ll have enough cash for a meal and a trail of hot, sweet tea to lead me into tomorrow. Maybe I’ll close my eyes and remember where I’m supposed to be and what I should be doing.

And just maybe, as the rhythm of the traffic slows and the night progresses, I’ll find some peace in the ever-changing cityscape. A time-lapse production of late revellers, harried shift workers, the dispossessed and restless; until finally the earliest commuters and exercise fanatics emerge from the riverside neighbourhoods to face the new dawn.

‘Hey, lady.’ A disgruntled voice shatters my reverie. 'I ain’t got all day, y’know.' Scrambling for cash, I reach deep into your left-hand pocket and find...***...a limp fifty-dollar bill...and a battered envelope. There’s a note scrawled on the outside in your familiar hand:

'How can you be, now that I alone have gone and you are left behind? The short answer is: you will be. For you are as singular and complete today as you were before 'mine' became 'yours' and 'I' became 'we'. My darling, I’m no tourist. You know how impatient I can get - always taking the most direct route. I’m just out of sight around the next corner. You take your time and meet me when you’re ready. Sometime...later. Whenever. I’ll be waiting.'

Stunned, I mutter an apology to the waitress and step out from the warm fug of the café into a bright, fresh New York morning. The doorbell tings shut behind me and I realise with new-found clarity that I know exactly where I am. I’m home. It’s not going to be a great day but it’ll be a better one, which is a start. Besides I have things to do - chocolate to buy, a jacket to launder, and a needle to thread.

uprooting
taking a booting
taken up outer
up ou'chere
going over yonder
pandering and panicking for
places to sit and ponder
to launder thoughts
to squander whats bought

im not enjoying this
im back where i started
what i WANTED was to get away from this place
what i GOT was this place
and its different
smaller
you get what you pay for

i pay for nothing because
i cannot afford anything
some might call it bitterness
it is called fact. fact
some might say it is a gesture
of love to take me
into loving arms
arms so mothering
smothering

not me
not for me
not best for me
i want out and i get
deeper in

We’re on-high - in Lisa’s (parent’s) 50th floor penthouse in Manhattan. The sky outside is a cloudless, blinding powder-blue, infinite and reflective as liquid. A TV news helicopter flew by under her window a few minutes ago.

If you don’t feel God-like looking down on the world from her living room, then you’re probably an atheist. Peter was with us and as we stood, looking out on Central Park and NYC from her balcony, he was suitably impressed by it all - from the chopper ride in from New Haven to the opulent digs.

Peter’s a poor (he exists on a meager stipend) doctoral student from Malibu, California. He grew up simply, in a rustic, one floor, three-bedroom cabin that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. He never had a smart-phone or cable TV growing up and only got glacially slow Internet in high school. He says he really lived in the ocean. His most prized possession is his 70s “Bing Bonzer” surfboard that stands, like a priceless, Egyptian relic in his dorm room.

We got a vibe switch when we came inside and 2Pac’s “Hit ‘Em up” was absolutely airhorning from the stereo system. “Westside, Westside, Westside,” Lisa and I joined in the chorus and clumsy-danced by reflex. Leeza, Lisa’s younger sister, saw us and ran over for a group hug with Lisa and me.

Lisa’s little sister’s 13 now and boy, is she a new-teenager. Her long, deep-red hair, which now has fluorescent blue ends, is tied-up in a ponytail revealing a buzz-undercut. Leeza had just gotten home from school and had already changed from her school uniform to ripped jean shorts, white socks and a black, 2Pac sweatshirt - which her mom reported she wears every single day. When her mom manages to launder that, Leeza rotates to a Jets hoodie - although she’s never watched a football game in her life.

“I’ve got a worried mind,” I confessed to Peter, later, as we were scrunched together, me half on his lap in an easy chair. He gave me a consoling hug.
Our grades came out earlier today and I got an A- in Physics 3. I crumbed in the face of classical mechanics. Is an A- who I am? Yeah, I guess so, and I’ll have to give myself an “F” for dealing with it. I suppose I’m acknowledgeably challenged.
“Can you appeal it?” Peter asked, he was trying to be supportive, but he knows that’s a ridiculous notion.
“It’s a male professor,” I said, “maybe I could send him a voice message and cry,” I updog.
“That would be HOT,” Peter said, in a dream-like whisper.
“Uhgh,” I groaned, “It’s emotional manipulation, it’s NOT ******,” I explained, creeped out.
I haven’t talked to my parents yet. They’re in Poland and don’t know my life is over.

“You deserve to embrace your awesomeness, stand up for who you are and reject the status quo.” Peter offered, “I dare you,” he finished, unable to keep a straight face. “But seriously, you’ll fix it after the break,” he offers in hope.
“Yeah,” I say, somewhat unconvinced, “I know.”

It’s A POWERFUL Thing...
This PAPER With INK... !!!

It’s Powers AMAZE... !!!
And Makes People Behave...
In The STRANGEST of Ways...

It's Something That Factors...
In Those Who’ll Backstab Ya... !!!

It’s Like... POWERFUL Drugs...
That MESS Drug Addicts Up... !!!

Because of Their LOVE...
For The Things That It Does...
Like Get Men These Hot Chicks...
Who Are Quick To Gold Dig... !!!

It Makes Them Spread Their Lips...
When It Buys Diamond Rings... !!!
And Can BUY Marriages... !!!

It Makes Businesses Strong...
Until Stock Values Drop... !!!

It Makes Some People ROB...
And Makes People Do Wrong... !!!

It Makes Some Play Along...
Until All of Its GONE... !!!

It Can Drive Some To Drink...
And Has Made Many Sink... !!!

Into... DEPRESSION...
And Acts of AGGRESSION... !!!

It’s A Powerful Thing... !!!
That Has Made Felons Snitch...

QUICKER Than Crims’...
Facing Life In Sing Sing... !!!
It’s Something That Can STING... !!!
And Teach You Life Lessons...

It’s Good For Investments...
That Bring BIG Returns...

But Can Also Bring Pressures...
If Stocks Take Downturns... !!!

It Should Be Respected...
As Well As Invested...

But It ISN’T Something...
That Should Cloud How You Think... !!!

It Can Make People TRICK...
And Can Leave People DITCHED...
If It’s STOLEN From Heads...
Who Are Gangster MADE Men... !!!

It Can Be What CORRUPTS...
Like It CLEARLY Has Done...

To Gangsters And Lawyers...
And Dodgy Employers... !!!

As Well As POLICE...
And These Politicians...
Who Run World Governments … !!!

And When It Comes To Drugs …
It’s A Thing Used By Thugs …
And These Smooth Criminals …
To Launder Their Funds …
And To Buy Them BIG GUNS …
That Then Make People RUN …
When They’ve EXPOSED Secrets … !!!

It’s A Thing That Breeds GREED...
And Can Make Loved Ones Bleed...
If Your LOVE For MONEY...
... SUPERSEDES Family... !!!

It Can Breed JEALOUSY...
That Can Lead To BAD DEEDS...

Folks It’s REALLY NOT ALL...
That It’s Cracked Up To Be... !!!!
And Can Be Your Downfall...
And Can Leave You DECEASED... !!!

It May Buy Property...
And The Things That You Need...
But Folks DON'T You Believe...
That It Makes You Happy...

Because That’s FALLACY... !!!

It CAN’T Fulfil YOUR NEEDS... !!!
It Just Buys What You WANT...
And Some... Security...

But Bills DO NOT STOP... !!!
And What It CANNOT Be...
Is Something That Makes...
Your Mind Sound And Healthy... !!!

Now Do Not Get Me Wrong... !!!
It Indeed Gets You PAID...
In Quite A Few Ways...
And Can Now Transmit Quick...
From A Swift Online Click...
On A... Digitised Link...

But DON’T You Ever Think...
That This Is Something...
That Can NATURALLY Bring...
You... LIFE Or CHILDREN... !!!!!

When It Comes Down To It...
It’s Just... PAPER And INK...

But There’s NO Doubting This...
In This World That We Live...

“ It’s A POWERFUL Thing ! “...

The bright sunrise made the snow-covered Alp mountain-tips, an hour-away-by-car, glow like they were topped with lemon ice-cream. Was this evidence of magic?

Peter (my bf) and I are low atop the five story Hotel de la Paix, in Geneva, which seems like a small town - with only 10 slightly interesting things to see - like a large fountain - gimme a sarcastic ‘wow’ (so sue me Geneva board of tourism).

Unless you're planning to launder money, go elsewhere (free travel advice). In fact, Geneva is SO boring, they should assume anyone traveling here (who’s not a physicist or the girlfriend of a physicist) is laundering money and just lock em’ up.

The Keurig in our room gurgled as it turned out yet another sub-standard cup of coffee. I’d started the contraption, brushed my teeth and jumped back in bed. But the thought of yet one more lousy cup of coffee was depressing. “Run down to the lobby and get us some real coffeeee,” I wheedled at Peter, helplessly.
“I’m not dressed‽” he exclaimed (he was in his boxers), like that was an acceptable excuse.
“This is Europe,” I foisted, “They don’t care. GO!” I tried my best to push him out of bed, but he was immoveable.
“Order room service,” he offered lamely, ignoring my pushing on him as hard as I could.
“That’ll take forEVER,” I moaned.
“We don’t have forever.” he pronounced smugly, “You’d better hit the shower,” he added, looking at his watch.
I checked - he was right. 15 minutes later, I was showered and dressed - a skill I learned in pre-covid high school.

Pater was on his laptop at the tiny office desk they gave you in supposedly luxury hotel suites.
“Today’s our last calm day, for a while,” I’d said, kissing him on the cheek, “we need to savor it.”
“The flight’s in three hours,” he’d replied - and again, looking at his watch, “Our Uber will be here in 20 minutes.”
“Two points to Slytherin house,” I said, defeatedly - the ‘busy’ was starting.
“I’m a Hufflepuff,” he said, in a ‘don’t you even know me​​‽’ way.

“Maybe we just shake hands and pretend we liked each other,” I said, dryly, “that would be perfect⸮”
He wrapped his long, ape-like arms around me and reminded me of the alternative option.
“You could always stay here, in Geneva, in my little apartment, all day, while I go out and work - for the rest of the summer,” he said invitingly.
“As irrational as that sounds,” I sighed, “I’d end up chewing the furniture, like an angry puppy.”
“They just don’t make wives anymore,” he lamented, “even though there are substantial tax advantages.”
“Aww, my dominant little male, man-baby,” I cooed in baby-talk, “You want to be my tax deduction!”
“I like when you talk down to me,” he confided, “It motivates me.”

I knocked on the door to the adjacent suite (where Lisa and David are), ‘Uber in 17 minutes.’ I called.
A moment later I heard a muffled, “Yep,” Lisa’s reply.
“Shotgun!” I called, thinking of the Uber seating.
“I already called it,” Peter said.
“You LIE!” I shrieked referentially, pointing at Peter like Valerie, Miracle Max's wife in The Princess Bride.
He chortled, getting it.
I was ready. Bring on the flight to Paris, the dress fittings, the make-up planning, the shoe and accessory decisions - the Grand Masked Ball (at the Versailles Palace) was in two days. I was ready, I could take it.
.
.
songs for this:
Nobody by Kate Earl
The Spot by Your Smith