Alone,
Mapless, clueless,

Now a year.5 later,
I am, not yet, more than I imagine.
What I do Is all that must be done,

no less, but only
my part, my talent which I have not,
if the parable is taken literal,
those talents in the tale,
those were money,

not charisma.

Deify, make a god
de-ify, make a truth. Yep. That, de-ifing,
I do that,
think of the oil in an engine,
slippery, slick, smooth fluid
resisting nothing,
rolling with the explosive ****** of life.

I breathe, being metaphorically,
Solomonically wise,
I feared God and kept his commandments,

and thought sure I saw a wink, but
that coulda been a gleam, a reflection taken
by my eye
to my hindbrain, a single quanta
of leavenish light from what the seer saw,

a gleam glistens, I think I see what Mercury,
the message, the medium, flowing twixt yen and yank,
reflects,
flexing,
shaking,
Vibrant un abrading wave bearing grains
of matter smattering to the shore,
immaterial to the wave,
where the power's
drawn, pulled,
not pushed,
listing not lusting,

air-ish heirily, heir of the wind, I go...

winds list whither they will, always
the path of least resistance,
no lie.
Any thing that refuses to fall,
whether it bends or not,
it stands,
under the push of the pull,
the dam
destructive
imbalance of heat, twixt air and sea and land,
the circuits of the wind, ventilator of life,
****** into hated vacuums
over physics forced channels,
down canyons
dammed by mountain titans eruptioned,
fractures in the firmament, formed
back in Peleg's day,
as the turmoil settled,
aftershocks, still, winding
currents formed chaotic energy cells,
swirls to hold
lower pressure pushed by high,
the life force of a planet, broken and frozen
and fried crisp,
if it weren't for air.
And water.

It works,
the biosphere,
but surely, as my friend Ben said,
"we live on the wreck of a world."

Life adapts to living, medium message.

Desert dry silicon
dust rides winds pushing its owned way
into places where...

There's the rub.
That's my part, at the moment,
Here, right here,
is how I know.

This moment is real. You dear reader
make it so.

Imagining there is no hell,
that's personal,
but on earth, as in heaven,
as a man thinks...
you know, I think that part never broke.

Don't lie, don't fret. Wait and see.
or watch and see, if you are the proactive type,
either way, don't lie about the seen and done.
And don't believe lies, about things you've seen and done.

This is a tale of love and a tangled lie,
An apology.
A letter to a brown eyed firefly.
Our players being a naive spark,
Lost in feelings without a map
A broken, bittersweet charmer,
A dancing, reading dreamer with his face always turned to the skies,
And of course, the rosy orange firefly with warm coffee-bean eyes.
I hope that fireflies can glow a rosy orange, but my knowledge on this matter can’t be promised.
We live in a dreary place, one without lightning bugs to keep us honest.

A charming schemer once began to toy with a young, carefree spark,
Pushed her away when she got too close.
He tried to win her back, trying for a fresh, clean start
But soon he realized her trust was something to earn.
She was frighteningly cold when she was angry,
But even frozen, sparks have a tendency to burn.

As she brooded, pain and confusion kicking up a spiteful flame,
The bitter boy found a firefly, another pretty light with whom to play his game.

The spark’s young heart began to thaw, but the charmer continued to play and tease.
Wanting to shield herself from heartbreak, the spark turned her attention to a dancing, stargazing dreamer.
He made her feel much more at ease.

Firefly whispered to the spark, in girlish gossip,
Admitting to a love affair with the charmer, whose lips she could only describe as delicious.
But to the firefly’s chagrin, the bitter boy had demanded that their romance remain surreptitious.

The reading dreamer had a beautiful mind, his intelligence capturing spark’s glow.
But his lust for her, while with respect, was not something she cared to know.
Caught in a romance with the dreamer boy, while her desire for the charmer began to grow.

And so the game of cat and mouse resumed, until the spark succumbed to a kiss, too great was the desire.
The charmer told her there was no one else...
Poor firefly. Her lover was a liar.

A bruised plum mark seared into her neck
Dimmed the spark’s glow in burning shame.
Next day when told that charmer boy had left his firefly, she cursed herself, for she was the one to blame.

Such a tangled web of lies, all from the foolish girl’s mistake.
She’d tried to force a romance with her starry-eyed dreamer boy,
In finding that his feelings were one-sided, she’d tried to feel something new
With someone who treated her as if she were a plaything, just a toy.

And out of debt and friendship,
she comforted poor firefly, with words like balm, but all in vain:
For when the leaves turned yellow, charmer and firefly were in bed together, just the same.
But this time, charmer called it a dalliance, and but a pitiful echo of romance and sweetness remained.

Confusion thickened in the mapless maze, when once the firefly let slip
Ephemeral infatuation had overcome her in the spring when looking at the spark,
And all the lanterns of the maze were dimmed,
Wavering flickers in the hazy dark.

But truth came quickly to her mind,
As spark dreamed more and more of the firefly,
Spark loved her soul, her soft full lips,
And in doing so, she condemned her own youthful heart to die.

Oh such sweet torture fate had concocted for the foolish spark.
To crave the one she had betrayed.
To carry a love unrequited, all while watching the firefly’s innocent kindness be wasted away.

And this, dear readers, is the last chapter of this tale.
The spark left the dreamer, realizing her heart had been hiding behind a flimsy veil,
For she found herself more drawn to nymphs than gods.
And now there are three suffering heartbreak,
The dreamer missing his bright spark, the firefly wishing for just a simple date,
The spark knowing she’ll have to let a fate with the firefly slip away.
If only I had known my actions would cause you this much pain.

And so,
I’d like to apologize.
I can’t do it in person,
Cowardice being my excuse.
I can’t even call you by your proper name, because you can’t know this letter is for you.
So in my writing, you were a firefly.
A firefly burned by a spark.
And as a spark I’ve yet to learn,
Altruistic in every other path of life,
Not to yield to Selfishness:
The vice that doomed my soul to burn.

I'm leaving.
Less like, Peace the **** out,
more like, I gotta go.
I'm leaving the way ships are wooed by waves,
under the pretense of more promising continents.

I can see where countless hands have pulled at my shoelaces,
wrapped my arches in ribbons of origami,
left me second guessing how well holes burn through soles.
It's been a long day of finding breathing space between double-knots and bending
broken fingernails back into place;
the self-constrained chaotic embrace of something supposedly so
straight as string brings forth beckoning ghosts of
those figure-eight souls who laid themselves
horizontal
to waste their Sundays tracing the Hills
on the breath fogged side of some painted-shut window sill;
trading the promise of Infinity
for the Religion of Monotony.
Praying through agoraphobic day-dreams
raining across the night sky of their eye lids
with the brilliance of meteorites,
imagining how earth-shattering they could be
if only these tyrannosauruses would just look up.

I have come here;
Less like, conquest
more like, exploration.
--Abandoned the comfort of quaint, suburban
ruins of the American Dream, which buckled
like widows knees mid frail-voiced eulogy
mourning the death of their Salesman--
and wandered aimlessly into the improvisation of some story-book jungle,
wishing I was better rehearsed.

I have come here
to congregate with the snakes and beasts; to feast beneath
the din of carnal sin and primal instincts. I've chosen to begin jumping
from stump-to-stump like stepping headstones
in a graveyard of fallen trees, where men,
                     who grew up too quickly and forgot the importance of pretend,
                     who learned early on how to black-market trade
                              the need to imagine for something a little bit more
                                                      tangib­le,­
                     who, smiling through serrated teeth,
saw it fit to clear this wilderness for something a little bit more
domesticated.

But thank god, these brambles grow so thick!
For every hail Mary their metal tongues would lick
into the trees' skin, a hallelujah of vines and branches and roots
would erupt in confused medley,
and their finest mathematics couldn't begin to calculate
the thriving division of a place so ungoverned by logic.       
In a jungle plucked straight from storybook pages
I'll band together with these untamed brutes
--these feral barbarians and unbroken monstrosities--
to howl at the moon with the effervescence of a Ginsberg poem.
We'll forge a tinsel-town crown and take turns
playing king of Where the Wild Things Are found.

See, unlike concrete cities
The Wild of Atavism has never forgotten that
Tradition is a catalyst for change
and that nothing is permanent.
Hell, I've been having laughing contests with a mountain
because every now-and-again he will crack
A smile, and when a mountain laughs
He does so, so gutturally,
From deep within his catacomb chest that
the whole Earth quakes -- everything shifts--
And I'm not gonna lie to you right now,
I've sort of got my heart set on being a part of something so
significant.

So if you follow,
shipwrecked and mapless,
Keep your shoelaces strapped tight
and run off the infinity of double knots.
If you go looking for me, continue
past the paint chips, through
the open window;
Set your sights to the far treelines.
And don't strain yourself listening for
the laughter of mountains,
Because when that stoic disposition
Finally does crack, you'll feel it in your feet
no matter where you are.
And from the way his ridges are crumbling,
I think I've almost got him beat.

I don’t know
I’m confused, can’t think straight
Dizzy, blurry thoughts, can’t focus on one,
Zooming in, zooming up; passing in, no way out.

I don’t know**
What to feel, what to do
What to say, how to react
And especially who to choose.

I’m weighing the chances
I’m weighing my feelings
I’m weighing the consequences
I’m weighing everything.

Still, I don’t know
I can’t decide; I’m lost in the valley of Choice
To go left or right, I don’t know
I’m lost in the sea of Confusion.

Disconnected, alienated
uncomprehended, bended
sounds fill
push eardrums, runs,
aural chaos, linguistic pathos
confusion, fusion, apprehension
verbal exhaustion rules
grooves,
governs this immigrant’s life. Five years of coping
scoping, hoping, scraping, trying
to get ahead, get with it, get it on,
fit in. Find that
niche, riche, find that place,
misplaced, fast
pace, foundering, mapless,
GPSless, guideless,
uncomprehended, bended,
alienated, disconnected.

What is a heart without a soul,
and an eye without sight?

I am a wanderer through life
the woods a dark path,
and an ocean so wide that if you swim too far,
you’ve passed Go and there’s no money to collect

Hands choke
the only embrace they know
when the only place they’ve known
is the beating clock face
perspiring time
beads of seconds running down the wall

I am an enigma and senseless in my thoughts
Things I know, things that remain unchanged

My eyes are broken
glasses aren’t helpful
seeing as my tear ducts provide as much liquid
as Roman aqueducts

My hair is metamorphosis,
cornsilk in summer,
copper in winter,
which leads to the questioning of a soul
though perception of color
determines nothing in the realm of human life

I am closed doors and low lights,
the bare minimum to read

Intergalactic travel has been made available
with the library as our NASA savior

Food, water, shelter
basic life sources
but I feed off of words

a language leech
a metaphor monger
a wasted writer

I lead through words
actions
lack there of

How can I control 40 kids,
when I haven’t even figured out how to do that with myself?

I am a magnet
my hands gravitate to stray dogs
***** cats
hand sanitizer is a wonderful invention

I am lost in what I am not
the feeling of loneliness certainly possible
even when I must always have someone around

I’ve shed my cocoon
but it’s felt more like a molted snake skin

My wings, promised brilliant and strong,
brown, crinkled paper, illegible

The strength to fly
eludes my desire to leave

What’s life without a paradox,
and a journey with no goal?

I am mapless
a piece of paper even more unreadable to my leaky-faucet eyes
something I find beauty in as wallpaper
but nothing I could use

I am rolling tides
Emotions crash in waves
knocking me into the current
taking me away
with no buoy in sight

unknown,
sad,
frustrated,
alone,
hopeless,
lost,

and, in the rare instances,

content

What’s being without feeling,
and trying without wanting to do?

I am a daughter that has made parents proud,
without making myself feel anything

I am a friend,
one that has been left
returned to
used
and kept
only by few

I am a companion,
my eyes used where his eyes cannot see color
“The sky looks so purple tonight.”
“I don’t know what purple is.”

I am love too powerful to maintain
cloaked in fear, disinterest, anger

I am not what I appear,
my mind thinking it’s a good idea
to display the opposite of what I feel

Freudian defense mechanisms
never gave much protection
offense tangible
tasting distaste
the words can be on the tip of my tongue
and cliff dive head first
into social suicide
Tolkien, Card, Rowling, King, Bradbury,
protectors and hopes

Paper can burn
memories sear
words pain

I am independent,
refusing aid
most cantankerously
when it’s needed most

I am depths
I myself don’t know
a venture that seems too dark to take the plunge
an open pit of life
disguised as littered ground

Disguised beneath layers ever so seamless
Sewn together with intricate pattern and stitch
Embroidered smiles and elaborate costumes
Well rehearsed, prepped and ready for performance
Play the cards, pluck the strings, sing the songs
Play the parts, put on the grandest of shows

The funniest thing is that not a one knows
The amount of rights and wrongs
The close proximity, yet vast distance
How hands ache, shake, and twitch
Some think it to be needless
But never could that be further from the truth

Each and every door within each and every floor
Of the corridors of my mapless mind
The maze that it is
Holds puzzles, pieces, and clues
To the one hidden just beneath the surface
Dreaming of once again seeing the light
After after such plight

Every mask
Every side
Delicate fabrics and fragile seams
Sewn with trembling hands
Guide an inexplicable force
Perhaps a strange task
Hidden among wildest dreams
Set for an unknown course

With each that falls away
Another takes their place
A mysterious entity
Behind the face
Beneath the handiwork of the seamstress
Sewing and patching every hole
Desperate for every layer to stay
Remain no matter the cost
All for what purpose?
What is it that they hide,
That they hold so near and dear?
Such is unknown,
Or perhaps forgotten
Lost in the course of time

- Jay M
April 30th, 2021

this poem is a note on the fridge,
written in a passive aggressive language,
and it is valid humour when reading out the note
once more in social situations
to read it as if you have a grape in your throat

this poem is usually a rash decision
the typewriter can’t be…but it looks *******—
writing should be easier than this
I should have visions to draw from
and an imagination to explore

something like sand should be forming words
in my written hand like it did before,
when restraint was what was so badly called for


this poem is a girl I have met and
I bet she has conquered my sorry mind
with battleship magnificence and I, surrendering
at the very first instance of an instant

my pacifist stance has always been
consistent with my fragile optimism
I have a fondness, I have come to learn,
for chance encounters that grow
into the holding of hands
and the mounting of tension

there are mountains,
I’ve mentioned their beauty
in poems revisited since,
but now they blush and ask
who is this you have brought
to our seat in the skies?
observing the intensity
of her avalanche eyes,
and her craggy wisdom,
she was wearing a sort of deerstalker hat...

we visited the library together and read
in reading chairs side by side
this poem is a lamplight conversation and an apology
to Edgar Allen, for we laughed at his prose,
and I pretended to agree in seeing no value
do you see how I simply must be smitten?
(also because this is the worst poem I’ve ever written)

this is, as a poem, a miss/failure, about
a Miss, or perhaps Ms. I met, I miss her
I want to sit with her and her ridiculous portrait of Nietzsche
in a location [insert one here later] with potential for romance

I would relocate a knuckle,
dislocate my awkward self
and let’s drown in the quiet of the lake,
or almost drown, or almost fall in love
and almost climb to the very top of a tree

and almost spend every hour
in the comfort of what you believe


this poem is a kiss on the bridge and all
symbolic meaning that can be drawn from
bridges does not apply, we kissed on a
drawbridge when the drawbridge went up
and we zipped through the city in paper aeroplanes
kept warm by paper coats
and we have floated on lakes in paper boats

we crash landed and were shipwrecked
in the strangest and most unfamiliar places

once, mapless, beautifully hapless, we wandered
lost for hours straight,
when she recognised Community Square,
the sleeping butterfly
I keep in my heart—

    shifted its
     weight...

Eyes roam the room
Clockspun, mapless
Treasures found in
The things left behind

It is not her fault that you miss her

There are no borders without reason

And the reasons are not one way nor simple.

When she was gone it was like experiencing the worst grief
All over again and it took
So long to settle in that it was over.

Shedding skin, depersonalization
Winter cried it's last breath to a
Window I shut closed.

Times up,you're alone
Again but what's the difference
And so I guess what's the problem

It's nothing new
Bleddry-empty
No more hate left
Alone and stranded

(I was

Now I am

So far passed

That stage I start

To find it funny)

Today is the horizon tomorrow and whatever before is all illusionary.

No gun in my hand no knife in my hand no food in my hand no money in my hand no ***** no **** no smoke no blow

Two cats on each shoulder one angel one devil but they both switch roles too frequently to catch up it's all good though

It's me who's decision maker in the end
And it's never been any different
I live with my regrets nightly til I learn
From them I just hope you're the same
But I'm done thinking we're the same
It was truly a waste of time
We've never been calibrated.

Catch me in the next life I'll hold the door open for you.

When I open my hands
revealing the worlds smeared
across them, I’m not terrified
of what you’ll see,
but, rather,
what I don’t.

Barbed fingertips and dwindling
paths—this fortune’s not charted
for the faint of heart.
I’m mapless
and hesitating.

Tormented by Chicago
30 years later - tormented.
Divinity School
Race

Trappist 1
Extrasolar water
Astrobiology
Space!

To boldly go
Spock and Kirk
Mapless
Chase

Discoveries!
Terrors
Beauties
Place

        ­Her face!

I wandered down the street-no general direction in mind,
And I stumbled upon an elderly woman standing in front of a church.
The woman had circular scars on her hands, and her face seemed to glow.
"Hello, son. Would you like to help an old lady out?" Her eyes were kind, loving.
"Maybe...what do you need?" I felt exhausted, and I had no idea where I was.
"Come back on Sunday. I have a plan for you."
She then turned around, and went inside the church.
The loving feeling was gone.

Oh how sinful that Friday was.
But Saturdays are the core of an aged apple.

I find myself without direction, once again.
I feel my vision blur, yet I have no influence in my veins.
I walk into the red light district of town-
I don't even notice.
I walk in front of and underground club, it was painted red.
A sign glowed "Fallen Angel" in bold, neon red letters.
"Hey! Hey you! Yeah, you, the one that is walking. Come're!" A man calls out to me.
His eyes are black, and so is his attire.
He smiles like a snake, and slithers up to me.
In his hand he holds an apple with one bite in it.
"What do you want?" I keep a distance.
I feel a sense of bliss in his presence-
but this bliss has an underlying feeling-
the feeling of hate.
"I want you to come inside my club." He smiles a grimacing smile.
"Not tonight though, oh no. It is much too full tonight. How about Sunday?"
The smile doesn't falter.
His voice was temptation, his eyes were greed, and his heart was gone.
"Maybe. I believe I'm busy." I remembered the woman, but she was oh so faint to me now.
I could barely even remember her face, or her love.
"I promise you'll have a good time." He takes another bite of his apple.
"I'll think about it.." The people inside sounded like they were in a bliss-
that the world was theirs for the taking.
I wanted that.

Saturdays may be rotten,
but Sundays are the seeds.

I woke up inside of my bed.
I didn't really sleep.
I shuffled to a sitting position, and I looked down onto the floor.
There lay a bible and a bottle of liquor-
I left them both there.
The world seemed to be mapless,
and my compass was spinning out of control.
Outside became my surrounding, as I walked through the door.
I looked to my left toward the Church, and I felt love.
I looked to my right toward the club, and I felt bliss.

My feet led the way.

I watched you lose yourself that summer,
heard you curse as you stumbled through brambles
and blindly crashed into trees.
I saw you fading from the map you had drawn for yourself,
forgetting which direction was North and which was Nothing.
I felt you move further away from the center of your earth;
I fashioned a compass with my hands,
the needle pointing back where you'd come from.
I slipped it into your pocket as you blindly passed me by,
then wandered off my own path, mapless,
no needle to point me back to myself.

There’s something romantic about stairwells.

                                        And something mysterious too.

                                                                              They’re a journey

a winding

          a turning

arduos

        Journey

But perhaps well worth the view

                                                          There’s something artistic about stairwells

                                               Maybe it’s the shadows

                                       and the way

                               they flirt

                 with the light

                                 (like I said there’s something romantic about stairwells)

              but there is some magic there too

Maybe it’s the fairytale

                 the something magic

                                  something tragic

                                             flight after flight

                                                                     a journey

                                                             Roadless and mapless

                                       A dance of torchlight and candle and flame

                                                                                                   I don’t know

                                                                        but there’s something special here

It's not down on any map. True places never are.
                           - Ishmael

Maps don't do much for me, friend.
I follow the weather and the wind.

                      - Bruce Springsteen

Oswald had no chemistry that hung in the trees like gossamer threads of dream…
he only had quadrants of ambergris, drifting in the iron lungs of impossible Tuesdays
twirling all the calendars of false pavilions on a carousel of too many moons.
Oswald had diamonds in open wounds. He saw how the beautiful ones
had Mondays that Saturdays envied to distraction.
and all the Roman roads were mapless.
Oswald combed the earth for a fraction of pearl
but found only a bounty of weightless
Design.

too heavy to be god.
too beautiful
to be
not.

mad as the mist and snow
           one man to overthrow
                       hitch hikin' we go

No one quite remembers how
we wandered into these phantom
repetitions, day after day
of raising and lowering our tents.
Clouds like mittened hands
beckon from every ridge
changing arrivals
into exits as we
are slowly inhaled by a destination.
Half-asleep in the saddles
on our mares, we gaze
at one another
as one gazes at another driver
in slow traffic--

there’s not much to say.
White figures
like soft statues
circle around us in the night,
their hands pressed over
their hearts as if cradling
miniature orchids…
They say the secret is
to do the wrong thing calmly,
and dawn by dawn
ln mapless wonder
we are learning the landscapes
to avoid, learning
our one death perfectly.

3637
That's my kind of number

When I was in Ireland
My friend a Polish plumber

I also like hitch hikers
Those mapless singing thumbers

Still looking for some good thing
Before I'm 6 feet under

               Lightning. Rain.
                      Thunder!

Everything is fleeting
My little lonely life

Destiny I'm meeting
Solitude and strife

I have traveled a bit
Rode that downbound train

Been to London, been to Paris
Haven't been to Spain

The Jedis do return
The Force can heal the pain

Biden's Delaware
Winslow Homer's Maine

My wish for mapless quests
Why? I can't explain.