1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

2
Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with
perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the
distillation, it is odorless,
It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,
I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,
I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,
Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and
vine,
My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing
of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and
dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of
the wind,
A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,
The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,
The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields
and hill-sides,
The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising
from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the
earth much?
Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?
Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of
all poems,
You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions
of suns left,)
You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look
through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in
books,
You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.

There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.

Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and
increase, always ***,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of
life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well
entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not
my soul.

Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.

Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.

Welcome is every ***** and attribute of me, and of any man hearty
and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
less familiar than the rest.

I am satisfied - I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the
night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy
tread,
Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with
their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my
eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is
ahead?

4
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and
city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old
and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss
or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news,
the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is *****, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.

5
I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to
you,
And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not
even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn’d over
upon me,
And parted the shirt from my *****-bone, and plunged your tongue
to my bare-stript heart,
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my
feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass
all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women
my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love,
And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields,
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them,
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap’d stones, elder, mullein and
poke-****.

6
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more
than he.

I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green
stuff woven.

Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,
Bearing the owner’s name someway in the corners, that we may see
and remark, and say Whose?

Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the
vegetation.

Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I
receive them the same.

And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the ******* of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out
of their mothers’ laps,
And here you are the mothers’ laps.

This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers,
Darker than the colorless beards of old men,
Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.

O I perceive after all so many uttering tongues,
And I perceive they do not come from the roofs of mouths for
nothing.

I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and
women,
And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken
soon out of their laps.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the
end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

7
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?
I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know
it.

I pass death with the dying and birth with the new-wash’d babe, and
am not contain’d between my hat and boots,
And peruse manifold objects, no two alike and every one good,
The earth good and the stars good, and their adjuncts all good.

I am not an earth nor an adjunct of an earth,
I am the mate and companion of people, all just as immortal and
fathomless as myself,
(They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female,
For me those that have been boys and that love women,
For me the man that is proud and feels how it stings to be slighted,
For me the sweet-heart and the old maid, for me mothers and the
mothers of mothers,
For me lips that have smiled, eyes that have shed tears,
For me children and the begetters of children.

Undrape! you are not guilty to me, nor stale nor discarded,
I see through the broadcloth and gingham whether or no,
And am around, tenacious, acquisitive, tireless, and cannot be
shaken away.

8
The little one sleeps in its cradle,
I lift the gauze and look a long time, and silently brush away flies
with my hand.

The youngster and the red-faced girl turn aside up the bushy hill,
I peeringly view them from the top.

The suicide sprawls on the ****** floor of the bedroom,
I witness the corpse with its dabbled hair, I note where the pistol
has fallen.

The blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of
the promenaders,
The heavy omnibus, the driver with his interrogating thumb, the
clank of the shod horses on the granite floor,
The snow-sleighs, clinking, shouted jokes, pelts of snow-*****,
The hurrahs for popular favorites, the fury of rous’d mobs,
The flap of the curtain’d litter, a sick man inside borne to the
hospital,
The meeting of enemies, the sudden oath, the blows and fall,
The excited crowd, the policeman with his star quickly working his
passage to the centre of the crowd,
The impassive stones that receive and return so many echoes,
What groans of over-fed or half-starv’d who fall sunstruck or in
fits,
What exclamations of women taken suddenly who hurry home and
give birth to babes,
What living and buried speech is always vibrating here, what howls
restrain’d by decorum,
Arrests of criminals, slights, adulterous offers made, acceptances,
rejections with convex lips,
I mind them or the show or resonance of them-I come and I depart.

9
The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
The armfuls are pack’d to the sagging mow.

I am there, I help, I came stretch’d atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.

10
Alone far in the wilds and mountains I hunt,
Wandering amazed at my own lightness and glee,
In the late afternoon choosing a safe spot to pass the night,
Kindling a fire and broiling the fresh-****’d game,
Falling asleep on the gather’d leaves with my dog and gun by my
side.

The Yankee clipper is under her sky-sails, she cuts the sparkle
and scud,
My eyes settle the land, I bend at her prow or shout joyously from
the deck.

The boatmen and clam-diggers arose early and stopt for me,
I tuck’d my trowser-ends in my boots and went and had a good time;
You should have been with us that day round the chowder-kettle.

I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west,
the bride was a red girl,
Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking,
they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets
hanging from their shoulders,
On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his
luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride
by the hand,
She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight locks
descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach’d to her
feet.

The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy and
weak,
And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
And brought water and fill’d a tub for his sweated body and bruis’d
feet,
And gave him a room that enter’d from my own, and gave him some
coarse clean clothes,
And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and his awkwardness,
And remember putting piasters on the galls of his neck and ankles;
He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north,
I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean’d in the corner.

11
Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore,
Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly;
Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

She owns the fine house by the rise of the bank,
She hides handsome and richly drest aft the blinds of the window.

Which of the young men does she like the best?
Ah the homeliest of them is beautiful to her.

Where are you off to, lady? for I see you,
You splash in the water there, yet stay stock still in your room.

Dancing and laughing along the beach came the twenty-ninth
bather,
The rest did not see her, but she saw them and loved them.

The beards of the young men glisten’d with wet, it ran from their
long hair,
Little streams pass’d all over their bodies.

An unseen hand also pass’d over their bodies,
It descended tremblingly from their temples and ribs.

The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the
sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with pendant and bending
arch,
They do not think whom they ***** with spray.

12
The butcher-boy puts off his killing-clothes, or sharpens his knife
at the stall in the market,
I loiter enjoying his repartee and his shuffle and break-down.

Blacksmiths with grimed and hairy chests environ the anvil,
Each has his main-sledge, they are all out, there is a great heat in
the fire.

From the cinder-strew’d threshold I follow their movements,
The lithe sheer of their waists plays even with their massive arms,
Overhand the hammers swing, overhand so slow, overhand so sure,
They do not hasten, each man hits in his place.

13
The ***** holds firmly the reins of his four horses, the block swags
underneath on its tied-over chain,
The ***** that drives the long dray of the stone-yard, steady and
tall he stands pois’d on one leg on the string-piece,
His blue shirt exposes his ample neck and breast and loosens over
his hip-band,
His glance is calm and commanding, he tosses the slouch of his hat
away from his forehead,
The sun falls on his crispy hair and mustache, falls on the black of
his polish’d and perfect limbs.

I behold the picturesque giant and love him, and I do not stop
there,
I go with the team also.

In me the caresser of life wherever moving, backward as well as
forward sluing,
To niches aside and junior bending, not a person or object missing,
Absorbing all to myself and for this song.

Oxen that rattle the yoke and chain or halt in the leafy shade, what
is that you express in your eyes?
It seems to me more than all the print I have read in my life.

My tread scares the wood-drake and wood-duck on my distant and
day-long ramble,
They rise together, they slowly circle around.

I believe in those wing’d purposes,
And acknowledge red, yellow, white, playing within me,
And consider green and violet and the tufted crown i

For
              Carl Solomon

                   I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
      madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the ***** streets at dawn
      looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
      connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
      ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
      up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
      cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
      contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
      saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
      ment roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
      hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
      among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
      publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
      skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
      ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
      to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their ***** beards returning through
      Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
      Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
      torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
      cohol and **** and endless *****,
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
      lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
      Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
      tionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
      dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
      storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
      blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
      vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
      lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless
      ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
      until the noise of wheels and children brought
      them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
      battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
      in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
      floated out and sat through the stale beer after
      noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
      of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
      pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-
      lyn Bridge,
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
      down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
      off Empire State out of the moon,
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
      and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
      and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
      and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
      Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
      trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic
      City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-
      ings and migraines of China under junk-with-
      drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the
      railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
      leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
      through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
      father night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-
      athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in-
      stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-
      ionary indian angels who were visionary indian
      angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
      gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla-
      homa on the impulse of winter midnight street
      light smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
      seeking jazz or *** or soup, and followed the
      brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
      and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship
      to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
      behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
      and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
      place Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
      F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
      eyes **** in their dark skin passing out incom-
      prehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
      the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
      Square weeping and ******* while the sirens
      of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
      down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also
      wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked
      and trembling before the machinery of other
      skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight
      in policecars for committing no crime but their
      own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were
      dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu-
      scripts,
who let themselves be ****** in the *** by saintly
      motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
      the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean
      love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
      gardens and the grass of public parks and
      cemeteries scattering their ***** freely to
      whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up
      with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath
      when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
      them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
      the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
      the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
      and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
      sit on her *** and snip the intellectual golden
      threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
      beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-
      dle and fell off the bed, and continued along
      the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
      on the wall with a vision of ultimate **** and
      come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling
      in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning
      but prepared to sweeten the ****** of the sun
      rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked
      in the lake,
who went out ******* through Colorado in myriad
      stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these
      poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver--joy
      to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls
      in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'
      rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
      gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet-
      ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station
      solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in
      dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and
      picked themselves up out of basements hung
      over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third
      Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-
      ment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on
      the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the
      East River to open to a room full of steamheat
      and *****,
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
      cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
      blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
      be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested
      the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of
      Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their
      pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
      bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in
      their lofts,
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
      with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
      by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
      incantations which in the yellow morning were
      stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
      & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable
      kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for
      an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
      for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
      fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-
      fully, gave up and were forced to open antique
      stores where they thought they were growing
      old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits
      on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse
      & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments
      of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the
      fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis-
      ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the
      drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap-
      pened and walked away unknown and forgotten
      into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
      ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of
      the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-
      saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,
      danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed
      phonograph records of nostalgic European
      1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and
      threw up groaning into the ****** toilet, moans
      in their ears and the blast of colossal steam
      whistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
      to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
      watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
      if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
      a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
      came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
      watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
      Denver and finally went away to find out the
      Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying
      for each other's salvation and light and *******,
      until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
      impossible criminals with golden heads and the
      charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
      blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
   &nb

Seven or eight people lounged about in a small back room. I had no expectations before arriving so I’m neither surprised nor disappointed by what I discover.  I find myself sat in one of those reclining gaming chairs and think “This must be the best chair in the room”.

Just playing it cool. I don’t know anyone here. There’re a few guys playing the Xbox. I eye them over, none of them look to challenge my presence, either too engrossed in the screen, or intimidated in some way. To my left sit the women in the place. I have their attention. Relief that the journey here wasn’t in vein, I give them all a nod and a smile. I casually introduce myself, and then find myself playing on the Xbox. I know I can’t play, but that’s the act. I ask what buttons to press, and laugh at my own hopelessness, eventually relinquishing the controller. It soon finds its way back into my hands. By this time, some bird is sat up on the arm next to me. She’s watching my actions, how I take command of the situation. Why don’t I take command of her? Sitting and waiting has never been a good tactic. I pass the controller over to her and say a few words in an attempt to get the conversation rolling. The drink clouds my thoughts and I forget that I’m talking to her. In the distance I hear them remark, “He’s a cool guy.”

I sit, reclined, legs outstretched, coat open revealing buttoned collar, slicked back hair, that look of pure relaxation in ones surroundings. She’s diggin’ it. I know she’s digging it. Her leg starts to press into my arm, and then her hands are down by my side. Commotion in the room. Some fat ***** needs to make her presence known. Everyone chilled. She obviously wants the attention. Not my type. She leaves for an upstairs room, and moments later, a spliff finds its way into my hands, courtesy of the girls to my left. I take a few drags, telling myself not to get too high; too late for that. I pass it on and fall back into the chair. Forgot I hadn’t smoked in a month.

Still a laid back guy, although not sure if it’s a choice anymore. I know it’s taking me over now. Slowly, I find myself entering that zone where weeds been taking me lately. Thoughts of everything; no filter; the need to verbalize things. Suddenly I’m Mr Charismatic, and you are all my audience, whether you like it or not. I stopped caring or stop noticing people’s reactions and forget about myself. I let my ego out to play, unregulated by the discipline of consciousness.

There are people in the room. Pretty sure they weren’t here earlier. One of them says something to me. “Is he been aggressive?” I think to myself. Judging from the tone of my reply, I obviously felt the need to establish my position. Taking no **** from these guys it seems; I’m still the Don in the room. Remember myself, remember the girl. Mr Cool again.

Filling up water in the kitchen, find myself chatting to random guys. Banter flying around the place. She’s watching me. Some powder is under my nose. “Kind of you to offer, but that better not be ket.” Turns out it was Mandy. Can’t say no to a bump. Pretty sure I’m the most ****** in the room right now, but I’m riding it well. Door frame seems like a necessity to keep me upright. Don’t want to brave the assault course back to the recliner, plus, I’m talking to the guys in the kitchen, don’t want to walk away.

We’re meeting J’s bird in thirty minutes. Twenty minutes. Five minutes ago. “We’ll go in five minutes.” She’s there again. Her presence known to me. She's up against me, but time is also against me. Too ****** up to keep playing this game. We’re leaving now. Out the door, I attempt to say a few words as we leave. My eloquence abandons me and leaves me in the ****. Flag a taxi; turns out we’ve booked one. Send him on his way. Tip the driver more than I can afford.

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Newark's down writers alley came.
Pederasty mol

God knows how our neighbor managed to breed
His great sow:
Whatever his shrewd secret, he kept it hid

In the same way
He kept the sow--impounded from public stare,
Prize ribbon and pig show.

But one dusk our questions commended us to a tour
Through his lantern-lit
Maze of barns to the lintel of the sunk sty door

To gape at it:
This was no rose-and-larkspurred china suckling
With a penny slot

For thrift children, nor dolt pig ripe for heckling,
About to be
Glorified for prime flesh and golden crackling

In a parsley halo;
Nor even one of the common barnyard sows,
Mire-smirched, blowzy,

Maunching thistle and knotweed on her snout-
cruise--
Bloat tun of milk
On the move, hedged by a litter of feat-foot ninnies

Shrilling her hulk
To halt for a swig at the pink teats. No. This vast
Brobdingnag bulk

Of a sow lounged belly-bedded on that black
compost,
Fat-rutted eyes
Dream-filmed. What a vision of ancient hoghood
must

Thus wholly engross
The great grandam!--our marvel blazoned a knight,
Helmed, in cuirass,

Unhorsed and shredded in the grove of combat
By a grisly-bristled
Boar, fabulous enough to straddle that sow's heat.

But our farmer whistled,
Then, with a jocular fist thwacked the barrel nape,
And the green-copse-castled

Pig hove, letting legend like dried mud drop,
Slowly, grunt
On grunt, up in the flickering light to shape

A monument
Prodigious in gluttonies as that hog whose want
Made lean Lent

Of kitchen slops and, stomaching no constraint,
Proceeded to swill
The seven troughed seas and every earthquaking
continent.

I am the embodiment of your sins.

I am your greed, gold in color and always asking for more.

I am your lust, swirling in amber with a slip of my tongue upon your flesh.

I am your wrath, rolling in a fit of redden anger.

I am your sloth, lounged in white, sleeping in between your sheets.

I am your gluttony, always craving more, more, more...

I am your pride, held purple in my state of royalty.

And

I am your envy, green with what never can fully be mine.

I am your sins. Full bodied. Anointed.

She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.

A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.

Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.

She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.

The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.

She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a ****-choked field.

A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are *****, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.

The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining *******
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.

Brackets

Your mum picked you up in daddy’s BMW,
we had to wait an hour while they scrubbed the brains of another son off the roof of the 125

(Why they built a multi storey car park on top of the bus station is a mystery to me.)

You carefully colour coordinated your files and scrutinized your revision schedules,
we watched nicked CCTV footage of two blokes smoking crack and burning down the bowling pavilion next door

(the old boys never did raise enough to repair it.)

You snubbed each other because of different tastes in jumpers,
we watched acid casualties talk politics with football hooligans

(a hastily rolled joint bridged the obvious gap.)

You lounged in the common room in your study periods,
our lesson got cancelled because John had been smashed in the face with a fire extinguisher

(and our tutor used to be a lifeguard.)

You worried about fashion and discussed the injustice of last night’s X Factor result,
we watched Neil’s head crash into his keyboard after he’d scoffed all his methadone in one go

(again.)

So here we are, just you and me. On the edge of everything and nothing, we sit staring out into the ocean of things we wish we’d done.

We hold hands, it’s a formality. I’m scared. You soothed my anxiety, because even though I was scared of you, I knew everyone else was too.

I miss making you coffee in the morning, I wish I’d loved YOU more. You always had that massive mug with two teabags or two tablespoons of coffee.

I wish your family and I could have worked. Please don’t think for a second I didn’t try. Most of my time spent at yours was on eggshells, the ones they had placed.

I miss our first year, your second. Remember that? We were so silly and full of joy. Gimmick Puppets, Plants. You and your stupid trenchcoat that ended up smelling awful no matter how much you washed it. Your long hair was nice. I liked it. It framed your smile that was as bright as the Sun that set in the West over Zephyr’s strawberry field.

The light sank in your eyes the more you were with me. I drained you, I knew that. I stayed. I lied. You didn’t trust me anymore.

I’m happy, admittedly lonely. But I know you’re happy, scared but happy. It’s always been my job to appear, do what I must (whether I know what that is or not) and watch over. The bear finds another like him, and as I remember mentioning a few times, as we lounged lazily on the sofa with our cereal, playing every bit the monsters others cast us out to be;

What on Earth is a bear doing with an angel?

Nothing could've prepared me for the geared up beauty on the other side of the door. " Oh good, Theon you finally decided to show up. Now before you start yelling about how you don't need a partner, I'd like you to meet Quorra. She just transferred from another guild for some personal reasons, and she's very excited to become partners," Rowan was talking but I couldn't take my eyes from her.
     She was absolutely beautiful. Long, sleek black hair with red tips, full pink lips. And haunting green eyes. This partnership was going to **** me.
No way could I consentrate on killing monsters while she was in action. I could just imagine how her hair would spin as she swung a sword. Realizing she'd been talking to me I decided I should probably stop drooling like a twelve year old boy, and listen.
    " When they told me I could be partnered with Theon the great legend I was shocked as much as I was ecstatic . I'm sorry if I sound lame but I grew up hearing stories about you," Quorra's smile was so wide I was surprised her face hadn't cracked.
"Ah yes, I'm not quite as exciting as the stories convey," I was doing my best to look her in the eye. I wasn't the social butterfly that I used to be.
Maybe it was my growing age, while my physical appearance didn't look a year older than twenty five, my soul grew old with the battle wounds acquired by many years of this life. I was a soldier in need of a break but would no doubt be drafted as soon as my feet hit fresh soil. Abelia was the one who loved being surronded by people, I would let her drag me to her dinners and social outings but she was the one who enjoyed them. I only enjoyed seeing her happy. Her eyes used to twinkle with excitement.
   I averted my eyes, in fear Quorra might pick up on my suppressed emotions. " Hardly believable," she smiled softly. Rowan lounged against the wall with a mocking smirk on his face. When Quorra turned her back to me to sift through her bag I flicked Rowan off, not just for that look on his face, but for the future hell I was about to endure.
    Rowan then decided to drop the biggest bomb on me then, while I was already suffering.
"By the way, Theon, Quorra is going to need a place to stay. And since you have that giant apartment all to yourself , I told her she could stay at your place. Is that cool?" even though he put it as a question , there was only one answer he would take. " Ah, ya sure," I said quickly, wishing I could run out the door and not come back.  Rowan took pleasure in my obvious displeasure.
"Thank you Theon, it's only temporar. Untill I get my own place, then I'll be out of your hair ," Quorra said smiling at me tenitivly, looks like I wasn't the only one feeling uncomfortable.
     Grabbing her bag that sat by the door, I turned to go outside. " I have a car that you can put that in, ah , do you need a ride?" Quorra stammered out quickly. It was amazing how fast things could get awkward. "No, you can follow me to the apartment, it's not far from here, " I said briskly .
Outside I noticed a black SUV parked in the darkest corner of the parking lot. Smart, I hadn't noticed the car going in.  She clicked a button that was on her keychain and the lights on the car flickered. "Is the motorcycle yours?" she asked going to the back of the car to pop open the door .
"Yeah, she's mine," I replied loading her bag into the back. She didn't have much on her. So either she came in a hurry , or she didn't keep much on her.  Rowan had said she'd transferred for personal reasons. "It's beautiful, does It go fast?"
She crossed her arms and leaned against the side of the car. Great she planned on talking for a while.
     "Yeah, that's why I got her. I like to go fast it's exhilarating , the feeling," I smiled at her , and my eyes caught a change in her eyes before she looked down. I could've been mistaken but it looked as if she were blushing. " Well we might as well get going," she mumbled and opened the car door.
I chuckled to myself as I walked back to Racer.
I was going to hell, might as well have some fun before I get there.

we, mistakes made in groping dark,
ironed and cheekkissed happy accidents,
told we arrived by love, and our purpose forward: to love.

we were chocolate milk runners.
we were completion grades.
coloring sheets of MLK and jagged cutouts of billy goats.
we were girls in sequined jeans with scraped knees.
on the basketball court we pushed pigtails to concrete.
rumors of us kissing in the lobby waiting for our rides
did circulate.

we, skinny white girls of Moore, Okla.,
skipped supper and laid at the feet of TV-watchers
like bleached branches of fallen oaks garnishing their standing brothers.

we were doorbells.
we were passenger seats.
peeking in the teacher's edition and handshaking answers in fluorescent bathrooms.
we were the first ones on the bus and the last ones off.
knees to chin, untied laces on heater's ****, winterlong sweat factory.
rumors of us agreeing to go to prom over fourth-period lunch
did circulate.

we, writers suffered writers' morality,
disregarded right, wrong, norm; lounged, waiting to be under the bus,
suffering for the story. tense matchstick lovers --  dim light for a moment and then.

we were someone else's *******.
we were someone else's hairpins.
as whatever ran so hot in us cooled, dried on thrift store comforters,
so did we. ceiling fans and ***. fingernails and boxed wine.
rumors sustaining.

and so it came, after announcements, after invitations,
after subbing in one bridesmaid for another, we were getting married.
we were grooms with empty pockets and full of sound advice.
our fathers took us behind the church,
chaplipped our foreheads,  and said,
"I know, we promised you were made from love and to love.
But I gotta be real honest here. You were made from whiskey.
And there's always the distillery."

we were jobless in wrinkled suits.
we were brown shoes; black belts.
and this will look good on your resumé. and this will look good on your resumé.
translation: how about ******* this ****? or how about this one?
a resumé was one page. we couldn't fit all the ***** on one page.

we, beardheavy and deodorant-streaked,
lived in dream houses in Ulysses, Kan., drove dream Tahoes,
watched dream Netflix, next to  portly wives who looked like
QUEEN MOTHER OF ALL THE BROTHELS OF THE LOWER MIDWEST.

we were childless.
we were wanting.
after consulting a physician and a bottle of whiskey,
we lifted and pinned the sagging belly of our wives with
a wooden board. one good **** in. one borrowed pregnancy test.

and so it came, the weddings of our sons. behind the church,
we took them aside and said,
*"I know, we promised you were made from love and to love.
But I gotta be real honest here."

Rustle in the leaves,
tussle with the vines,
afoot in the tree of life,
the gutsy snake coiling,
Raddled and rattled with mans sin,
Divulgence to the loner who cherished the fruit,
in the dusky orange red skies which brought in the adhen
and from the tolling bells in the distant church ,
While the snake lolloped in the stark blue skies,
Manipulating this oppo for the abyss.
The wandering seam of the night,moon,
With flickering light forbade the seance on the seemlessly never ending night,
Pity the snake for another morn would rise
For it will have to go to the *** ,no the pit.
The ***** and cuckoo within cooee , chanted and coerced another morn out !
Following the sun like the grail, the people lounged in to the waters of the ganges.
While broods of hurted children huddled in hate,
hurling stones at the traitor.
Hauling the renegade into the throngs,
Hunnish hands assaulted him until he swooned in to the motherlands lap,
Hue and cry of the avengers brought in the tripper,
Heavy loads hugged on to his shoulders,
In poise words he spoke,
''for every creation has its flaws,
And when we batter on the withered soul,
It leaves the barren man dry again,
To ward off evil is like blowing into the forges of Vulcan,
And only when tests and temptations are burnt in the bonfires of joy,
will man be moulded into a joyous being''
Hissing whisphers from the crowd spoke,
Heresy of the tripper is the hold,
Hasten yourself and bring our brother medication,
Hunt down the snake will we,
For this vagabond has spoken in verses,
Only to be filed in the trippers travelogue.
Hushed up as the snake in the pit.

Alone beside crimson
Destiny exclusively found
Gore has income
Jealous king lounged
Marred nightly often
Putrid, quite rotten
Saved timely use
Voracious with xenia
Yearning Zeus.

It was a beautiful day for a picnic.
The sky was the deepest blue
with a bright yellow sun hiding too-
Hiding behind fluffy white clouds, wasnt it?
You were stunning. Radiant.
Your auburn hair lit up in the sun
and made the lush grass pale in comparison.
You were dressed in the purest white
with not a speck of dirt to be seen.
It was impossible not to stare
as you lounged on the checkered blanket by my side.
Oh how I longed to hold you
and stroke your lovely hair!
To kiss your lips and cheek
and clutch you close to my heart.
It was a perfect day for a picnic,
but you didnt have to spend it with me.
I understand it's been three years
since you buried me under our tree.
Live your life in radiance and sunlight,
my dear.
Be free.

Yesterday I turned 24
I got everything I could wish for,
I evenn got a unicorn.
I seen everyone I adore & love,
If there was a cloud 9
I'd float slighty above.
Chocolate cake
That my my son
Wanted to smash in my face.
I stayed in the house all day
And lounged around like a ***,
Eating eggs cereal and pizza
With my bf & son.
Pretending to clean,
And "get dressed"
I didn't drink,
Not even a shot,
Go out or party,  I did not.
I just spent my day day
Inhaling love and peace
Doing whatever came to me.
24 feels way different then 23.

That 1 lengthy and detailed conversation we had as I fixed her a hot bubble bath, it was very necessary to figure out the pattern in which each of our souls orbited around one another's life. Life. It seems that in the seams of this biographical regime, we get lost in between 2 wings, steering without a true tale, leading with our beaks instead of our two feet. Finding elation through impatience. Determination to fly without defining our own matrix. At that particular time I just wanted to slowly sit your soft body down into that pool of lavender scented steamed water, but everything you had to say nearly drowned me. The invisible crown I continuously placed on your head suddenly vanished as my imagination panicked. I always thought that my mind was backed up by my heart which was backed up by your art. Oh how gentle you scribble. I have to erase line by line, direction by direction, affection by affection, disconnect on top off disconnection. Difficulties I'm having while looking at you lather but no longer seeing you in the picture. Watching you lave as you give me your take on how our relationship was shaped was a bit unfitting. In my mind "it's inevitable that she's open for bidding". I'm lounged against the sink in a bind. Bonded by your fondness, then detached by your honest responses. How blunt you are and how drunk I'm soon to be. Wasted vibrations, my mouth began to tremble. Somehow I find an idea to cause the both of us to tickle. Temporary bliss. Moreover all of my hard efforts that night turned out to be the worst shift. I went from pleased to please. Expectedly you never tried to appease by appealing to my needs. Draining water like my decaying heart. Drying off reminds me of my suffocated feelings. Lotion as I drink this 40% potion. Hoping of hydrated coping. Can you leave? So I can shower, attempting to rinse away the most beautifully devastating hour.

Shadows.
In all directions I look,
I am surrounded by shadows
that make it hard for me
to decipher the dissemblance
when my eyes are wide open
and when they are sealed shut.

Darkness hovers over me
like it is fused with the air I am breathing;
suffocating me and making me gasp
for the unseen
that is imperative to keep me subsisting.

It seems that my lungs
turn into two small plastic bags
that need to be refilled
every quarter of a second
regardless of how abysmal
I drag air into my system.

With each breath I take
paralleling each time that passes,
I drift farther and farther away into oblivion.

Maybe this is how it feels
to dispossess yourself
and let the phantom take over
what is left of you.
Maybe this is how it feels
to be lost and remain unsought.

Yet even with treacherous memory I now have,
there is still a fragment that fails to vanish.
It is the fragment that remembers
the glimmer that used to keep the darkness away.

The scintillation that awakened love, hope, and faith
that lounged within me.

The light.

My light.

You.

Twelve years old and I knew I was too much.

A body too much- a stomach that stretched and stuck
and a waist left red, dented, stinging after a day in jeans.

A brain too much- a thought process that took flight
without permission and dropped rogue missiles of ideas
in phone calls with great aunts, deep in essays
during state funded tests and leaked from brown paper bags
in middle school lunchrooms, leaving me silent and sticky and
only just fitting in.

Any conversation was secondary to
the fuzzy way I could feel
my mouth tripping hard to keep up with a dizzy brain
and even before a sentence finished
Feeling regret like warm honey coat my throat and
seep down hot and solid to my roaring gut.

I was a heart too much.
Tears ran forceful and free for
so long. There was the heavy,
lonely feeling that grabbed root at my pelvis
and lounged, languid for days- ******* any hope I could muster
out of tan hide until only leather shell remained.

Dawn would find me ushering in chilling spells of misery
triggered by the whole wide world-
a boy with a gun on the news,
a teacher’s tight forehead while mean kids flexed their puberty,
Or finding a picture of my parents before they were my parents,
and wondering if they ever actually knew love.

At twelve years old my soul was stretched out and sagging.
At twelve years old I held tight to being less
At twelve years old I knew only one way dull the aches sprouting
as fast and fresh as ivy inside my bones.

At twelve every birthday candle and eyelash,
every wishbone and 11:11
was devoted to smallness and simplicity
So certain that the less of me there was
the less I would have to bear from the world.

More than half my life I’ve spent in pursuit of sharp
bones to shield and a lithe tread to conceal.
I have itched to be a sole shrinking girl among
the growing and gaining of peers-
to finally find quiet in a body that
was beginning to ripen in a shrill,
panicky way that would just not do.


More than decade I’ve spent with bile on my breath
and scrappy knuckles desperately begging
the arrangement of meat and bone I live in
to contract; to fold back in on itself and strengthen
into a place where I could catch my breath and
learn to tend.

Now, too many seasons and too many
mistakes later- I do wake up in
a smaller body. Twelve year old me is
beaming as she sneaks glances the XSs
stitched in labels and the chorus of likes that
coo and comment how darling I look in dresses.

Twelve year old me is quietly,
solemnly psyched about the bruises that bloom across
my paling curves after a good stretch on ground.
She even nods her head gleefully
to my swaying pulse as it dances to its own, faraway music.

Twelve year old me could care less about the bone-buried knots
entombed along my spine and the putty-snap cracking
bones I show off like party tricks.
She sees the yolky shimmer of eyeballs and trail of hairs I shed
like bread crumbs marking my path and she doesn’t bat an eyelash.
She’s glad she managed it-
and anyway the price is worth the discomfort,
health in youth is mostly over-rated.

But I do wonder what greedy, vicious
twelve year old me would think if she knew
I am still, secretly, too much.

Could she muster any pride as she feels
my heavy, fatigued heart expand to fill the bits
and dark corner secrets I starved away?
Or any pity as she watches empty-word fog crawl
between ribs and bellow out like a pirate’s flag under raised hipbones.
She meets the murky mass that fills my frame- heavy and suspended
like a dark towering cumulous
waiting for the bow to break and the storm to fall.

Maybe she’d find my brain chemistry unnerving.
Seeing desperate fists pawing at ideas as they are born and implode
and holding numbly to loose bits, reeling them in stunted fervor like kite strings.
Thunder cracks and I’m not nearly electric.

So I grip tight;  sinking decalcified teeth
into the catch of the day, rowing a rusty canoe out of the
whirling, mirrored lake of my mind and back to shore.
I will attempt to fit my
hard won ideas into any and all variables.
I will drive myself crazy with inspiration
but never create a **** thing.

The thoughts coursing through my almost-there body are
flexed horses. They gallop around
the same dirt track for days on end and I have bet
what’s left of my youth on photo-finish losses.
I’ve got nothing to show for who I am these days.
Except for the dresses.
I look good in the dresses.

there is absolutely no hippocratic jurisdiction in psychiatry, i sometimes walked into the psychiatric offices, poked fun at psychiatrists for being callous sadistic *******, as one suggested: thinking out-loud in reverse: oh, he must have been abused as a child... psychiatry has strayed away from making a hippocratic oath... it actually doesn't have an oath to make: it has persisted with more harm than good, clinging to the notion that there is no summa totalis of the body, and medical psychiatry is to blame for this persistent infiltration of psychiatric lingo... you can't even begin to imagine how much it pissess of people who live in a secular society, to be strapped under an umbrella of "mental illness", while the jihadis are celebrated as completely "sane", psychiatry is the one branch of medicine that's persistently being undermined by the general public, for me, psychiatric materials are too readily available, is psychiatrists are the new priests of the secular age, i demand! i demand that psychiatry does what the church did once before, return to it being solely written in latin! too many ******* retards are abusing this branch of medicine, suddenly everyone is a ******* psychologists amateur, the jack-of-all-trades know how! ******* know ****! i'm this close | | to boiling point with respect to the degradation of psychiatry... reverse everything! start writing psychiatric works, solely in latin! give psychiatry some hippocratic credibility, sure, it's a hit & miss with the pharma side of things, but come on, give these people some ******* empathy, do what the churches undid, and write all psychiatric material in latin! the public doesn't have to know the complexities of this branch of medicine, because, clearly... it doesn't!

we live in an age where dialecticas is
not engaged with,
not even to the point where you can self-realize:
oh, right, i know absolutely nothing!
you can't do that these days,
you can't have that self-realisation -
that "demand" for a "consciousness" -
100 years ago people spoke of a *soul -
that summa totalis of ****** mechanisations,
that eating some food and then
falling to sleep, and yet the organs working
their magic digesting the food...
yet people have replaced the soul
with a reinvented concept of
"consciousness"... the **** does that
even mean? a second awakening within
the first wake?
the brain is the only ***** that can't
truly experience itself unconsciously...
even when it is "unconscious" it still
poses the threat of dream theatre...
   i find that the summa totalis is
bordering on an a "soul" within this
membrane, in that:
  at least one aspect of our body can't
exactly become part of the summa totalis,
and become enclaved akin to
the heart during sleep...
or the stomach prior to falling asleep
while still managing to digest,
the brain can't be deemed completely
unconscious, otherwise how else would
you mind to state why light is trapped
and then projected, and we dream?
           dreaming, that "consciousness"
of the unconscious brain, and somehow
pulverised by the truth-bidding inflection
of the pentagram...
       god, i hate these sorts of poems,
i read a bit of heidegger and suddenly spiral
into this jargon...
  i abhor it...
           literally, it's about as enlightening
as turning on a lightbulb, minus the stereotypical
imagery surrounding an einstein moment...
more like that loony tunes moment when
the head turns into a donkey's head,
   or we see the dunce's hat appear...
elsewhere the capirotes march...
                     but then i think of mental illness
and the stories of the young,
and i'm genuinely worried -
   i was one of the first kids to own a nintendo
NES...
  yes, from the ages of 4 to 8,
my father was just a voice on the phone,
and the odd package of gifts from her majesty's
fair green land, notably the nintendo NES...
but being one of the kids, we still preferred
warm summer nights, hide & seek,
playing with marbles, walks into the woods,
picking strawberries coloured pale yellow
before being ripe, throwing potatoes into
fires, eating gooseberries, eating whole plates
of sunflower seeds,
                  i remember days when we had
neighbours, neighbourly women playing cards,
sitting till 11 talking outside the communist
concrete blocks...
that transition period, i.e. my childhood
has a knack of almost always reappearing...
   so i must be "mentally ill" for reading heidegger,
not many people do,
maybe i suggest something?
  learn biology / chemistry or physics to a degree
level before reading books like that...
it softens the blow of reading puritanical
humanism of, say, a novel...
        or poetry...
             and some people take holidays
to the caribbean, or take a cruise around
the norwegian fjords...
   or walk the great wall of ching ching...
   or ride a horse on the mongolian steppes into
the sunset, or ride the trans-siberian railway...
me? i take a "slingshot" back "home"...
get immersed in the native tongue,
  and finally! oh finally! manage to read a book
in the native tongue...
  i found that i'm a slow reader if i have
a book in polish, but can still hear english
on the television...
   back "home"? what a surprise it was for
my grandfather: he just threw bolesław prus'
book lalka into my lap one summer and said:
lap it up.
      and i lapped it up...
  point being, all these sights and sounds,
scents and exciting stories people have from abroad...
well... when i was in kenya,
i lounged, drank enough to fall asleep in
a hammock overnight and was not stolen by
the somali pirates, but someone did steal
my glass of cognac when i woke up the next morning,
then drank some more, and stayed in the shade,
played some ping-pong with a german,
chatted up these gorgeous ivory beauties of
the night, and chilled with macaque monkeys
on the balcony giving them nuts and sachets of
sugar, again, in the shade...
   i took one dip in the indian ocean and became
bored from the beach vendors pushing
****, drank some more, wrote a short story
for my grandfather about an elephant
           dunking its trunk into a bottle of whiskey...
drank some more, lazed in the shade,
read c. g. jung's western man in search
of a soul - dedicated it, and gave it to one
of the german beauties, drank some more,
         laughed at a baboon with hemorrhoids
trying to sit on a roof once it raided the kitchen...
point being: what sightseeing i have when
i go back "home" is the language -
sometimes i read it, sometimes i might write,
but i definitely speak it,
  but reading it is like the tower of pisa
for me...
           this complete re-immersion of the 8 year
old kid that left kicks in...
        ooh, ant that -18ºC temp. of winters in poland...
to be honest, i never know why people
decide to go to tropical places on earth,
sunniest and what, in the middle of the winter
months, why?
      coming back must be a double ******...
why not go to somewhere where the winter
months are worse than from where you came from?

The Story of Love

A long time back, when
Vices and Virtues were,
Young, playful, and inexperienced.
They had made a game of which,
None wished to ever remember.

Long forgotten in the span of time.
There was once a story of,
How Love had gone blind.
In this tale, it spoke,
How those friends were caught in,
The boredom which Idle Time bestowed.

In nature’s garden, they lounged,
Until the music of,
Silent minds had,
Riled Impatience twitchy thoughts.
“We should play a game,
Of Hide and Seek.” he said.

“What’s that?” Madness asked.
Impatience smiled as he explained,
The rules of the game,
Of how they would play.

“Everyone hides where ever they like,
But there will be one that will seek.”
“Sounds fun!” Madness thought.

“I’d be ‘it’.” He suddenly said.
Vices and Virtues went to hide,
As Madness counted,
The grains of sand on the river side.

Envy hid between, the clouds to watch,
Wishing she had a better spot.
Anger hid under a rock to think.
His face as hard as that thing.

Laziness laid on his bed to sleep,
Caring little if he was caught.
Patience sat behind the leaves,
Together with Tolerance he hid,
Amongst the trees.

Secrets stayed below,
Hidden in the Lakes,
Clouded by a shadowed face.
Vanity cloaked herself in,
The reflection of shiny things.

Love hid behind,
The white rose bush,
Of which she liked.
There she lingered for some time.

In time, Madness had forgot,
Why he counted the grains of sand.
So he searched every where but,
Was unable to find anyone.

In hopelessness, he glanced,
Up and found,
Envy’s sinister face
Peering through the clouds.

“Found you!” he declared.
For he knew he was right.
Infuriated that she was the first,
She gave him her brother’s site.

Anger turned cold,
In sight of,
His sister’s mocking laugh.
In his head he knew,
Someone had to pay,
A pair of eyes for,
Giving him away.

“Love is in the rose bush.” he said.
“But she wont come out till,
You stab her to death.”
Devoid of thought Madness believed.
With a pitch fork he charged,
Yelling madly for Love.

Wildly he stabbed until,
White roses turned red.
In her piercing scream, he stopped.
As she crawled out of her hiding spot.

Blood dripped down her face.
Madness knew it was a mistake.
He begged for her forgiveness and
Apologized. “What can I do for you,
To make it up to you?” He asked.

“Be my guide,” she said.
“You can be my eyes.”
And ever since, it was said that,
Love was blind.
And Madness always had,
Guided Love.

                                           -Vas Bismark

"Quien es? Quien es?" Billy called out into the dark.
He then heard the sound of thunder and glimpsed briefly a faint spark.
A powerful force struck him and spun him around.
He then found himself face down on the floor.
There was extreme pain within his chest as he struggled gasping his final breath
and then BILLY the Kid was no more.
Pat Garrett would gain power, money and fame for the killing of BILLY the Kid.
He shot an unarmed young man in the dark without warning.
That's all Sheriff Pat Garrett did.
Garrett ran out of the room nearly tripping himself over the bed.
If it was The Kid and he missed he knew he'd be dead.
As he fled out the door into his deputy he ran.
"I just shot The Kid! I just shot The Kid!" he exclaimed again and again.
"That wasn't The Kid," said his deputy man. "Garrett, you've gone and shot the wrong man."
Jesus Silva and Deluvina were the first to arrive at the scene
to inquire as to what all of the noise and comotion had been.
"I just shot The Kid," is what Garrett said.
"Could one of you go back into the room to check to see if he's dead?"
"Go to hell Garrett," is what Jesus Silva said.
"You went and shot him. You check to see if he's dead."
Deluvina however immediatly went into the room to see what she could never un see.
She slowly approached the lifeless form on the floor.
She knealt down, turned him over and gasped in horror at who she saw.
"Is he dead?" Garrett asked. "Is it The Kid?" he asked again.
Deluvina rose to her feet and lounged out at him.
She violently pounded her fists on Garrett's chest
as she screamed the vilest curses she could bestow upon his head.
She wanted to scratch his eyes out of his skull.
She wanted him suffering. She wanted him dead.
Garrett's deputies and her friends tried to pull her away from him
but even with their combined strength it was a task difficult to employ.
Interspersed between her tears, Deluvina Maxwell cried out to all who could hear,
"They've killed my little boy!"
Billy's body was then carried to the carpenter shop
and carefully laid down on top of a table.
Lit candles were placed surrounding The Kid.
The village then held an all night long candle lit vigil.
Women and children, the old and the poor,
even manly men were seen openly weeping,
as they all walked by giving their final good bye
to their fallen young friend now eternally sleeping.
"Duerme bien, Querido" or "Sleep Well, Beloved" are the words that were engraved
on a small wooden cross that Deluvina Maxwell placed at Billy's grave.
This would be the first of many visits she would pay to The Kid.
She would visit him well into her senior years.
Many times she would be seen kneeling down at his grave
with her hand on her heart and often in tears.
Perhaps it's just me but none of this appears to be
the treatment of a feared and hated outlaw.
The feelings expressed by those who knew him best
were feelings of mourning, of loss and much more.
A wanton killer? An unconscionable human being?
BILLY the Kid was none of the above.
All who were his friend displayed it on the night his life did end.
Billy Was Someone Who Was Very Much Loved.
And so, close to midnight, on July 14th in the year of 1881,
William H Bonney was shot and killed, compliments of Pat Garrett's gun.
Pete Maxwell's house is where BILLY the Kid became Billy the deceased.
Billy, may your reckless and restless spirit finally
Rest In Peace.

He wears lots of light blue and close to gray
so young I wonder where does he come by
such tender knowledge with King Kong depth
I fantasize;

Here I am in his world
and my hands are on his shoulders as he writes
Stolen knowing
(must be lifetimes before, how could it be otherwise?)
I see the mist that circulates and falls like dust
dancing round the light
filling up the room we share
and I take the temperature from his body
as he makes love to me where inside his mind
already brewing
a becoming
of a thousand different ways to express
his heady stroke of my skin and darling wet flower

Books spewed (so many) about
are dog eared
all the greats are here
and a few I must purchase oneday

He is contained and unsure just because he is
young
but his heart beats like a grand scale of octave notes
who’s perfection between pitch
sirens those who want to feel his world
(like I do)

Lounged and laid back, surprising shapes of figs appear
In this… my own version of the best lover for me

Figs, pear shaped and small and dark purple
All ripe with my desire

I love his smile

It’s mine in this scenario
the parting of his mouth is like kings table
desserts
endless like his words; delectable, pungent, foreboding
far reaching
Sometimes un-intelligible for a less than writer like me.

But that’s why I wrote this,
It’s still delicious to find power in flesh and word.
I’ve simply fallen.

Linaji 2011

When it rains, it pours;
A downpour less frequently wet, sure
Dancing a shambling, ill-dressed manticore
Who has barely the strength to shake anymore
Find the only chagrin of the forecast is yours
But you bring some fine wine, a handle of Dewar’s
Your mind ascending from improbable sewers
Searing tomatoes, aged beef on skewers
Burned-off or absorbed during barhopping tours
With whom you lounged on Mediterranean shores
In your history head: Mongols, Turkmen, and Moors
It hits you again ‘til another drink floors you
Sleep on a sofa where bad weather ignores you
And somewhere inside a girl asks, “From who
Comes a voice (yours) at night ambling the halls?”
The friendliest ghost, not haunting at all
Who’ll likely come by if you give him the call
But leave in the morning before sunlight is tall
Out of fear of breaking some protocol

Despite this, you’ve certainly seen so
They keep you around as part of this scene, so
This is your life, just how it should be, so
Thank you my dears, my beloved Piso

In the middle of the night I went to Wakelee and the wind whipped at my face
like the way your thrashing words would wash up on the shore of my mouth
and I'd spit them back out at you just the same if not a bit more eloquently.
At Granada Street I remarked on the place in the road that our bodies would meet;
this is where we collapsed because the way we hugged goodbye admitted defeat.
I didn't make it to behind the school where the tree we lounged underneath grew
as we sat as a lioness and a lion completely content to bask in the shade,
but I know after the fall and the winter, that tree still stands the same.
There wasn't time to drive by the house where you traced the tops of my fingers
after inhaling two lungs full of smoke. Where you noticed the way I wrapped my hands
around yours like a knot that couldn't be undone while you were in that state of mind.
But I saw the water we saw when we were ready to duck and cover and the way
the tides of a reservoir can be stronger than any other.
I sent each word out on a separate paper boat lit with a candle as the
"I" floated further than the rocks we threw
and the longest word was sent out second while
"love" drifted towards the beach and
"you" swam away from me.

the night was quiet.
cold but sweet
rippled pools in a forest of pine.
i lounged on the couch
as you threaded round' and round' the trees
pinpricks of lights dripping from your arms.
as you carried christmas in your palms
and i watched
silently,
your grace  unfolded
like   a tear stained love letter
"desperate hearts belong together"
and it's true i could never find another angle like you
to perch at the top of my tree
and your eggnog lips move   gently
over my mouth
eyelashes
brushing window panes
like fragile falling
snowflakes

There was a stream of crystal gleam.
He sang the purest song to me.
I often pondered the scenery.
How true could the imagination really be?

I saw us both entwined in a shawl.
There was a special place for a girl and boy.
The chill from the creek sent others Bon voy...
He played the sweetest tune from his toy.

And_

Love kept us warm.
He gave me kisses as he hummed.
The sun hid as if it would storm.
We lounged and watched nature change its form.

There was a stream of crystal gleam.
He sang the purest song to me.
I often pondered the scenery.
How true could the imagination really be?


By Jessica Hughes

I dreamt a dream that a polar bear and its cub
entered a home.
A home that I was inhabiting with my mother and father.
At first, it only lounged around by the sliding glass door
(with its cub).
Very sleepy like, very casual.
But we were curious about its being around,
so we traipsed around the door, gazing at it.
Someone opened the door! (******)
and I scrammed to some little-boy's bedroom,
locked all the doors, even the doors leading to the bathroom.
Sooner than later, my parents found a way into the bedroom where
I hid.
The polar bear was trying to get in,
to eat us we were assuming,
so we hid under the bed.
Then I said, "let's climb out the window!"
So we did. We sat outside by some bushes.
My dad called me at this moment (in real time),
said the fish weren't biting and he was going to go golfing.
I tried not to sound hung-over.

You go strains of mad when...
...Ambition becomes Eating Your Own Hunger Pains
With savaged pride you feel that all you need to achieve in life
Can be done faster with gold and good courtship
You croon apologies to your ideas and hope they stay.
They don't stay.

You go strains of mad when...
...Demonic intercession is hailed as miracle
You pay your division of a vast tithe into coffers you never see
and watch with shame and awe at a penetrative truth
working noisily behind curtains.
This polls well.

You go strains of mad when...
...Dust and diamonds are sold as combi-packs,
**** comes in boxes of strict six; for illustrative purposes, if you want four you've got to sell or discard two for your reputation.
There's no loyalty card or price-break on bulk.
I'm flat broke.

You go strains of mad when...
...A nobody sketches you with disarming accuracy
Their medium is a third hand snipe relayed with bitter remove
No more the taut nymphette lounged aground, on the rocks
The naked crystal uniform of your debtless regime, gone.
You're a shirt and name-tag girl now.

You go strains of mad when...
...Pockets burst outside the Church yard sale
The Ministry guilts you into buying all the furniture and music
moving it one piece at a time into your life until
suddenly you have a Church to burn
Just in time for winter.

last night I met your doppelganger
a sign of good fortune to come  
he planted tiny orchids along my skin
bit my neck whispering I would be okay
sweetest summer shadow
a soft shape summoned in slumber
my fingers played with yours
laid together over covers
you know, love, you were wrong
I only wanted you the way you are
laced lips lingering longingly
we lounged, locking looks
it hurt that you believed I wanted control
I wanted your happiness, and mine, yes
but I didn't waste our brief time last night
I whispered secrets against your skin
hoping you'd hear how humbled I am
that you had held heaven to me

Brody's mother
was quite the dame
she had this way
of inviting you in

after school
and offering things
to eat and drink
and hey boys

she said
why not try out
the outside pool?
Brody said

OK
and so you followed him
but what do I wear?
you asked

O nothing
he said
no need
it's only us

and well
the neighbours
can't see ****
and so you went

with him to his room
and undressed
and he gave you
a big white towel

and you went
downstairs with him
to the outside pool
his mother was there

and said
how about a drink of pop?
sure
Brody said

and you nodded
holding tight
to the towel
and off she went

in her red
two piece swimsuit
her **** quite neat
in the sack

of the suit
come on in John
Brody said
don't be shy

and so you dropped
the towel
and climbed in
the pool

and the water
was warm
and came up
to your chest

he swam around
but you just stood there
with arms folded
over your chest

after few moments
his mother came out
with a tray of pop drinks
in glasses with straws

gosh John
she said
looking at you
you sure are white

do you hide your body
from the sun?
Brody laughed
guess so

you said
she smiled then put
the tray on a small
white table

by the pool
and climbed in
the pool
her top piece floating

like pink piggies
you looked
then looked away
she talked

of Brody's father
how he liked to
just lounge
on the water

like a lily
Brody guffawed
some lily
he said

his mother smiled
as she looked at you
her eyes blue liquidy
as if they were

of water
she swam towards you
you afraid of the water John?
can't swim

you said
can't you
she said sexily
Brody you never said

John couldn't swim
didn't know
he said
swimming off

to the other end
of the pool
I’ll have to
show you how

she whispered
would you like me
to show you how?
she came nearer

her piggies seemed
pleased to see you
it's all a matter
of confidence

she said
trust in yourself
and the water
you looked at her

liquidy eyes
she put her arms
under the water
and held you

lift your feet
off the bottom
of the pool
she said

you tried but your feet
wouldn't move
here
she said

and she uprooted you
and you fell
into the water
and splashed

and flapped your arms
like a drowning bird
she held you tight
and said

relax your body
in my arms
you stiffened
then slowly relaxed

in her arms
holding you
to her
the piggies brushing

against you
her breath applely  
and perfumery
right

she said
slowly flap
your legs
in the water

and move the water
with your hands
and arms
and so you did

slow but with a kind
of nervous pleasure
feeling her there
her hands and arms

holding you
and Brody up
the other end
flat on his back

looking at the sky
like some thin lily
as you lounged
with his mother

and her piggies near
getting to trust
the water
and the new acquired

skill she'd shown
and you wished Brody
was gone
and you had her

to yourself
all alone.