And it's difficult to remember something as the very name of Eisenhower
Or flowerbaskets
And tired movies made of silicone and
Aftersex
Or sixteen candles echoing out of an imaginary suite with cigarettes at every table
And green lawns
Barbershop conversation
The reflection of the sun in special trees
Or my best friend Jesus Christ
Or the smell of the theater that one day with the cynics who just got back from a tennis match and barbwire still laced delicately around their thoughts and
Nihilism
And automotives
And priestess Jane or Henry's gloomy doppelganger who reads alternative magazines and loves the aesthetics behind broken glass
And fine tuned musical instruments

It's difficult to remember
Lonesome Fridays smoking on a park bench trying to finish the puzzle
Or synagogues you've never been in
Or insurance
Or newspaper articles detailing the misadventures of Mr. City
(Of course of course! Take your shoes off at the door and make yourself at home)
We're tossing all our sewage into the ocean
that's far from clean as it
LOOKS anymore these days
That's anything
And everything except for the glowing mountains seen faded and wintry behind Apartments and the
"Glorious Mexican House of Spices"
Never been in there either

It's difficult to remember
Times of Mr Twin Sister
Or Joan Jett in the hallway
In a highschool who's psychology classrooms have become a time capsule in the ground/
Or the gentle skinny ******
Wearing Broadway makeup and
Kafka tattooed on his shoulder
I like his hat
He looks at me suspiciously
Or the guy who is yelling his order at the counter when it's quiet here anyways
Or the mariner who has a hobby of the saxophone
Or 1970s *******
Or the sheepskin bikeseat fad that's yet to come but I'm predicting it now!
Or two dollars and twentyseven cents at the beginning of Allen Ginsberg's America
"I've given you all and now I'm nothing"

It's difficult to remember
The Oriental
Sacramento flies
Midnight Moon
Quarter to four
"The Immortalization Commission"
Remodelled hotels downtown
Where mandalas on the floor became a
Tiger lily luminous
And the kimono is yesterday's painting/
Dearest Darling
When I was feeling down!
A staircase in reverse (??)
The sound a kiss makes
It's difficult to remember
Colleen's earrings
Or Washington State
Or air conditioners in Bali
The Indian ocean's daybreak hymn
To Seminyak
Or whatever happened to Steve from the Airplane out of Taiwan
On 3 days awake
Hello Kitty nursing stations
****** (Kubrick's version)
Cardboard taking up half my bedroom
It's difficult to remember until I jot it down and then its a sudden forever
Sunshine Superman in a cafe spontaneous
drawings with someone I just met who has some ******* attitude/
Who hops fences and has feral ideas
People! En Masse! Te Amo!
You're all in wolven liberty
And vague postulators
And holy prostitutes for the dollar
Sad eyed intellectuals
With undergarments made of breakfast cereal/
Seaferry poetry is different from
Trestle in August poetry
Or henna handshakes
Or the Napoleonic era
Sweet Cherry Pie
The tulip's tongue
Garabajal
Cloudy first day of July
Was hotter yesterday
But not too hot

It's difficult to remember
Antiquity
The pale horse Studebaker outside the clinic
With a glossy red trim and **** I wish that was my ride
Andy Warhol's exploding plastic inevitable
Nearsightedness
Angels and their ability to shower with a a snap of their fingers
Distant harp music
Better him than me
Bananas almost ripe
Green aquatic
Reclusive junkies
Palomo's appliances
Questions for the next time
How much I like what you like and how I like that you like what I like
Ahh that's not my bus
I'm trying to get to the city!
That one quote Socrates is known for about knowing nothing as true wisdom
Supermarkets being built on top of liquor stores burned down a while back
Monopolies
Tragedies
"No Love Lost"
THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
Your guess is as good as mine
Never tried to eat Asian food in Asia
It was all pasta and good cider that tasted like pineapple
Rain hitting the window and I'm
Drowsy again
God Save The Trees!
Curly hair looks good on boys
Torn up blinds
Queer as a three dollar bill
If Bill costs 3 dollars I'm sure he's caught something better safe than sorry
Sage advice
I'm the very model of a modern major general
Golden yen and international currency
Incense in the bedroom and how good it smells
There's my bus! Applying for a better job than the one I got now
But that's how it always is right?
Chasing satisfaction
1007 apt
Porch ornaments
Unique names
Unique style le style
The extra charge on foreign ATMs
Cordoroy polo shirts
Flooding in New York!
When someone's face screams *******
"Slippery when wet"
Dine N Dash
Grass gone yellow
Confidence in dyed hair and capes as long as wedding gowns
But less expensive
Doors that always seem to be locked and I'm wondering 20 year later what's behind them?
Albino animals
White thoughts as clouds or
Abstractions
Weathers nicer in Florida but who cares
Festivities this early in the day
Automatopeia
Do sad orphanages still exist?
Just like the movies
Midnight in mirrors
That sick puppet at the shoe shop used
To know how to really hammer it down
And now he's weak and forgotten
Never heard the words of a true prophet only Oceania
Or the private temple near Apollo Bay
Like Japanese gardens behind that gate
Will I ever see it
Make a proud example outta ya misbehavior
Form without function
Exhausted spiritualism
*** Kettle Black
negative photographs of dark rooms
And there's laughing coming from SOMEWHERE
Essays on kleptomania
Had a bad dream I became a cliche
Surrounded by other freaks and there was a lovely ***** I fell in love with her
We married in Oregon by the sea her name was rosy
***** rosy
Check your mailbox for nails
And what you don't wanna hear/
If you were a vegetable you'd be organic!
Empire
Satirical bubble gum
Satori
Linda Lovelace and her special party trick
That's someone's fantasy
Diamond in the rough
Mister guy with two black eyes frequents the adult playhouse
Hes fully stocked on fishnet leggings
He's too proud to put them on himself but
Has nobody else around
Boo hoo
Swigs back the whiskey and trips down the stairs getting a third black eye in the process
Marion came by with her dog the other day
Wanted her box of clothes back but he loved to sniff them to remember her
But she wouldn't have it

"Honey I'm going to call the police!"

"Ah they don't give a **** they have bigger things to worry about"

"Yeah you got that right shrimp **** enjoy my unwashed *******"

And she never came back again
He started losing the vertebrae in his spine 1 by 1 and you know where this is going
I won't say he was a poor man because he had it all coming to him the *******
But he coulda had a better start if you ask me.

It's difficult to remember
And even more difficult to forget
After the fact

Seagull opera
Giganticism
Portrait of the artist as a young man
Losing one's pencil when the best idea of your life drops down from heaven and into your sorry head
Signs graffitied to have funnier meanings
Cruelty
Impassive
The Loyal Lioness
And Bangladesh has too many kitchens
And not enough dishes
When I was young I used to say Island as "is-land"  
Which is true it is land
But the Europeans probably stole it from somebody else anyways/
I left my future behind
And objects in the mirror are closer than they appear
Im no illusionist
I'm terrified of the cracken
Father feels the same way about
Hotels
Why bother/
This has been going on and on for a while are you tired yet
Is your patience being tested
Mine isn't because this wasn't an all-at-once kind of rambling
It's extremely important to laugh at least
Once a day
Otherwise you'll find yourself a politician
In no time at all
Rockefeller
(         ) Quaint home to die in
I think
Trains create great music
Float on
Sink into yourself
Roses in a crooked alley
That's people
Busy busy busy busy
Let's describe a situationist
I'm not a fan of bright colors on clothes
Your best shade is blue
Bricklayers transcription of Don Quixote to a skyscraper
Rocket thyme
& Garden
Erratic children's
Insomnia
The doorbell repeatedly
Vancouver riots/ I saw that live on the news!
Pictionary with the surrealists
N Dada TV set MC Escher
Antenna
You're in the Twilight Zone now
Dear Ramona
I'm trying to make it up to you
With a brightness only seen when you're ready to see it so please for the love of God don't blame me when it's not appearing
The tapestry hidden
Keep your blankets clean
And avoid hospitals unless you're fine with fishbowls & the halogen
The water gestapo
Storage lockers full of unacted plays and
Antique microwaves
Emitting the nostalgia of the cold war era
And what a waste of time that was /
Walter Wanderleys presence in Autumn universities
The opening of Vivre sa Vie
Salvador Dali's pluvial taxi
Lightbulb epiphanies
Aquariums and their protestors
Zebras in the shade
Two wrongs dont make a right
Elizabethan theater
Saloon shootouts in a fever dream
I lost and bled out all over the rustic wooden floor
A maiden reached out for me and El Paso did play I woke up and pretended nothing happened/
Funerals for bad People who did bad things
My first memory of a cat beneath the mattress
Hello Dolly!
Auditory learning
Psychotherapy
Lillian the landlady lost her ladle and labeled little Lyle as a lair
The Black panther movement
Reading symposium some years ago and
Making note that Phaedo was still my favorite dialogue/
Zen Buddhism
Xoxo xoxo
The day Gypsies were replaced with
Surface ****** appetite
And not the real thing
Newspaper clippings
Hypnotism when all other options are out
Mystical visions of sidewalks
And the love of your life stepping through a door you've never seen
Maybe Yes No I Don't Know
Creature comforts
Che Guevara's problem is that his beard made him too easy to recognize
(Also that little hat!)
Chinese cough medicine didn't work
For long I still wheeze sometimes
Domestic violence thru the wall
Ceiling fan probably doesn't even work!
Dimpled laughter
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
In skytrains to Commercial
Bermuda in her mind
And courtesy in her voice
I'm no Arthur Rimbaud
But you already knew that
Alcazar of Seville
Filling up the shipbottle
Here's your paradise
Now relinquish it as it is
False!
Hare Krishna
Nowhere Fast
El Diablo and the
Portofino loaf left rotting on the countertop
Latin children speak of the sacred viper
You'll hear of it after this but we'll never see what the ******* meant
Heads alternating round the social current
Of my lively city
There's a dog soaking up the rain
And songs are made in honor of
Recent catastrophes
Trials are dealt
Cards cast to the gutter
New York quiets down for the news of another war
You scratch my back I'll scratch yours
Skeleton key
Ballad of the last wailing zoo
THE ATRIUM
Complexity in simplicity
That's how Brainard got me!
Elderly overcoats
Hiding purest LSD
Is a fan of Hawaiian T shirts
And a communist
What if I was a Freemason
Or owned a tanning salon
Faint crimson
What did Marv look like again?
"You're surrounded by people who love you"
Coffee when one needs it
GOODBYE BLUE MONDAY
Tattoos on the wandering man
Oriental chimes and the people who own them
Bus stop regulars
Vines overtaking power lines
The hypnogogic state
Strawberry light softening
The mind
Sister Ray LOUDLY PROCLAIMING
doitdoitdoitdoit
Passing the graffiti n Pluto neon
Halal wide awake another Saturday
Where's the Karaoke
Flashing by here
Those who find comfort in a bridal scavenger hunt
Or expensive beer
And here comes the hooded clown
Clamoring about his favorite
Loudspeaker
Telling me my time is soon and the noise
Drowns out the drowsy bliss
After hour spirits the perfect time for
Writing and trying to read distant Chinese
Indecision on the tip of the tongue
"NOW WHO IS THAT KNOCKING
ON THE CHAMBER DOOR?
COULD IT BE THE POLICE?"

I'm completely off the topic
And into Apartment lobby photosets
Low battery phone calls
Confessions
Nauseated reverb
Trying to see the attachment people got with bingo halls
And moving companies
Ah no luck again
Eve is at it with her showtunes
Halfway methodology
Triage
Paisley headbands left
Distraught on the quivering
Heater
Dwindling sunsets
We're truly disciples of the moon spirit which grants us more energy
(This is according to a drunk I met one night)
Or ***** old men
When the horizon is engulfed with
A winking cinder
Suitcase at the door
Last time
First time
Magician never reveals his fetishes
(They all have to do with bags under your eyes)
Employment office dramas of my friend the one who blinded a social worker
And the one who blamed Islam
And the one whos philosophy entirely consisted of Spooky Action at a
                                            DISTANCE
Parisian riots
Queer youth
Didn't make the team! Jester
'cross the hall who's beard suggests
Ishmeal n car battery n expired vegetables n rain which crosses the line n
***** cranberry n
Poorly fitted suits n
Harsh pigment n incense shops n
Bocca     secret towns
With churches more beautiful than any you'd find in your own city
n the cultural market
Xylophone ear to ear
Soul cleansing starting at only
$89 (with a 6 month guarantee)
Sophie's birthday and her picnic at Victory Park
The nearby bums trying to sell tea mugs and
Loose wires beside gated convenience stores
I'm an Island away attempting a poem
And never bought a scratch n win
Or heard the same song more than seven times in a row or been in a column
Or escaped the washhouse
Invested in a birdcage for next year
Been to a palm reading
Visited Oasis
Smoked salmon
Told anyone else about Montana
Screamed the things I'd like to scream
** Word of the day
Or kissed a lunatic or swallowed the corpse of yesterday
I keep her on my neck until
I'm too anxious to let go
Counting streetlights
Jeans worn in and faded to be sent off to
A lonely caffeine addict
Christmas Eve I'll be reading a postcard from San Francisco
Asking the same questions
My imagination is made of a different material than last week
Now it's the same color as your hair
HEY that's a good pickup line to use in the heart of the Canadian Embassy
Drinking discarded music resembling a sweater you may have said YES to if it wasn't so unsure of itself
And now Mr. Acker Bilk ascends thru the window of an August home
Like a lazy hornet
I'm still lost without identification
Or a nice belt
As happens when one uses a quality item too casually
How did uphill suddenly seem so downhill?
I'll claim a waterfall
For SALE that inevitable Indonesia
Greyhound O another greyhound O another greyhound
I'm fretting too much about not enough
Delayed the Airport and the yellow question

????

II

What if I knew how to read the curb?
Or translate drunken droll
What if I was never tired again and could
REALLY do anything I set my mind to?
What if I was the first cigarette that cured cancer instead of caused it?
What if I could end superstition
And walk underneath any ladder I wanted?
What if I could make it with a young Audrey Hepburn!?
What if I stopped pretending to be a microphone and got on with "it"
What if the grocery store closed later
And I opened earlier?
What if parking lots werent so sad
All the time?
What if gravity simply had enough of exotic birds and specifics?
What if we stopped trying to recreate what is truly lost?
What if foreign children embraced
Wasting time instead of
Midnight starry bicycles
And the antics of a monk
Disguised as a romantic?

There are those that worship God
And those who worship the Sun
And those who worship nothing at all
But I suppose on the last bus
We're all the same exhausted
Voice who can't wait for next pay day
What is an empty bank?
Or authenticity
What is there to prove anymore?
I hope I don't die tonight and regret
Being impulsive for once
You're a smart shadow
And a dull character
Pushing the last of the daisies
Get the lamp to turn on again
Give the pavement something to look forward to with your walk
Be consistent in being inconsistent
If there's a word there's a ***** and a poem for it!
We all oughta worship
Nothing at all except
Clarity
Compassion with ones neighbor who either forgot the pay the electricity bill or couldn't afford to
We're a swimmin

I am tired of my rants
like a millions hammers
pounding away in my brain
constant chatter drowns sanity
expectations love and affection
comfort insecurities and misadventures
regrets lost and found
a million lives not lived
what could be and what is
hauntings and remembrances
shadows looming large on today
today that is not perfect
perfection that is just in mind
mind on verge of lunacy
constant screams drowned
in the agonizing void
void that is my life

I am tired, very tired

tears they have a mind of their own
roll down when you least expect
open your soul to strangers
strangers that glare
stay in dark away from glare
tucked in blanket of oblivion
lost and lonely yet sane
lost and lonely yet sane

You were afraid
Of falling.

Falling for people
That gave you no ground
for landing;
Unreachable heights that
Hands can't grasp,
All that is left is an
Emotional mess -

Because love is a dangerous flight.
And settling for risks,
Isn't your choice of fun.

She have never been into things such as growing a garden, they say her potential will have to be reached by a streak of light draping through the window pane.

she builds her greenhouse and collected some seeds, she doesn't sort if she'll grew by season or if it's a monstrous plant— she just want to see a lot of butterflies that she have never seen before.

she remain unimpressed, seeing a hues full of periwinkle and blues, roses and thorns decorated beautifully by her fragile hands, you can see on her plain tone the visible traces of paper cuts and ink blotch.

one day, a boy visited her garden, he grew fond and perpetrated on every flower she had. they sat on an empty, unfurnished room, filled with his paintings and brushes, not seem to notice the one uncleaned palette she used and left forgotten. She watched the boy as he paints, as if he knew every detail of his magic, it reminds her of the days she spent the same way, on how she loves it, tenderly in her heart— she said he was a stray butterfly, everything on him is luminous.

they spent their time there, little did the boy knew that she loves everything he had done on the garden. She wonders how a little misadventures were found in a wild wood.

Chaotic misadventures of yesterdays
Conquering the unheard lethal whispers of death
Violently shackled my life.

“Hallelujah!”

As the loving hands of our Almighty God
Touch of oblivion
The crimson thoughts and arts vanished.

The unworthy deed and madness gone.
“I am worth
For what I am will be the marvelous ending.”

Henious memories to hurricane of learnt.

When I first met you, I hated you. Something about you drove me crazy.
I guess I wasn't used to the challenge. Or maybe I had never met one of my own kind before.
Your soul is beautiful and dark. Mostly, it is powerful like raw energy. Like touching an electric fence. I couldn't help but be captivated.
The first time you kissed me I knew I wanted you. I knew you were the one that would change me. You opened me up and tore out my insides, leaving nothing but beautiful destruction.

**** and chips
buried in the bass-line
All shaken heads tossed
listening to the misadventures of a ****-talker
Her lips taught and dry
sporting a second skin of ripped denim
Thick eyelashes caked in spiderwebs
Hustling on doc martens
crunching teeth beneath toes
Ankles taught with leather
A pretty ***** touched
like flowers dipped in chalk
stuck in choke it down memories
Quietly screaming
     look for me

<6:30 AM.  Sun May 28 2023>

An internal clock stirs within,
a full fledged conscious conscience rings in,
like a silent alarm at a bank being robbed.

Various devices inform, each with a
different measurement cup/stick, that I,
have slept exactly seven hours which,
pleases, as I am queried,

How do you feel?

Fully refreshed!

my choice today,
most apropos,
for now awake, I begin to:

compose myself.

In the ordinary, is the where that
I have oft found poetry,
not to mention love and other good things,
walk the house, north to south, east to west,
under weakish, not really high in the sky,
sun rays break thru the tree cover and create
a checkerboard of light and dark patches
for children to play upon, if any were/where here.

All seemingly is well.
The rabbits beneath us,
are sleeping in,
because after all,
it is Sunday.

But I digress; composition implies order, form,
even malice aforethought, so as an artist,
knowing the world is yet extant,
and I, yet am in one piece(s),
make coffee for two,
humming an old tune of similar ilk,
re tea

But every human has some master,
and mine the machine!

Want coffee? Hah!
Empty the grounds!
Not enough.
Now, Refill the Tank!
What! More?
Fill the beans!

Suffice! Relent!
I am human, you machine, and I demand coffee.

At last, the impolite machine, that knows not ‘please’ nor
‘thank you,’ nary its native ‘your welcome’ in its native Swissie Deutsche (Keine Ursache!).  All very Swiss, and businesslike,
doth relent, making a very fine cup of coffee.

I shall not trouble you with various side trips,
that though common to all humankind, but
provoke two sister thoughts in quick succession.

A modified abbreviated prayer:

Dear Lord, Yo! You have brought me to
the beginning of a new day,. Thanks a lot!

I skip over this remainder part, my excuse?

Too many words!

(“As the world is renewed fresh and clean, so I ask You to renew my heart with Your strength and purpose. Forgive me the errors of yesterday and bless me to walk closer in Your way today.”)

The other thought, a reciprocal to my gratitude.

Why in hell do our bodies age, ache, snap & crackle, Buddy?
perhaps a revision of this policy is in order, Would it upset
some vast eternal plan if my body never tolled my years
in lines of degeneration, waves of visible and invisible erosion,
or at least make coffee a magical, healing restorative elixir?

Nope.  

The usual sneering silence of just be happy you’re alive
etc., etc., etc. and etc.

Don’t think I am asking for too much. just a little tinkering…

More to write, but I chastise myself with:

Too many words!

Leave off here, though my misadventures
and adventures too, yield up inspirational
hymns galore, and batches of familiar plaints,
that is my inalienable human right to express
to nobody else, in particular,

But you.

For in so many ways, we journey together
though our paths, locales, and courses are
so vastly different, in my mind, we are together,
in the here and now, and in the forever future,
we must continue to share and share alike,
our words….

Taking an alibi or two,
I let him take my hand for an escapade
Strangely excited of places with unknown routes,
"Let's get lost, let all your worries fade."

Just two lonely, young tourists visiting a coffee shop
Take a little risk or two,
and old souls slowly collapse their hearts' gap,
letting one heart drift into a free fall after the other, even without a clue.

Take a detour or two,
I fell for someone's chaos,
someone's scars,
someone's darkness,
someone's entirety of being.

The beach waves gushing back and forth off the coast,
someone stood as fairly as calm in the chaos,
mistakingly opening our deep past and wounds and stories,
He took my hand for love and misadventures.

IA

I'm a dark and twisted guy
Who wants to shred El Burnside
With a bullet shot by *******
Like Erik Clapton best said it.

I'm on the Dark Side of the Moon
Smoking Pink Floyd listening to Cudders
Smoke anything to hyphen my mood
I'm a conartist who laughs at everyone's misadventures

But cries when something bad happens to my ancestors.

I listen to psychedelic music to put me on the Devil's Swing....so I can let my soul and spirit sleep.
A dose of ecstasy in any given music festival.
Sasquatch! Lollapalooza, a river dressed as an animal.
But I'm acting like a citizen of planet Jupiter.
Because of the way I've been living.......
I can't get any stupider.

I'd like it if your orange were more blue.
If your red more green
and your eyes more less than moons
that break waves against me.
I glue glaciers to sun
to cool your Spring's mischief
and never am i happy to remove
from my stillness
between Us.

I am unjoyed
in the twine of our lost joy.
Made unkind in the rasp
of our sour glee.

I glue glaciers to the sun
to cool the misadventures
of our dire hope.
I noose the rope and sing
as you go beautiful
away

from me.

Get it, India head
This is no bed of roses
Poses in prime positions
Are sublime repetitions
Of what has gone
Before

Karma comes knocking
Knowing
Falling flat on your face
Bindis race
First fast then erased
From your forehead
Forever more

Rickshaws run a mockery
Round rubbled ruins
Of modern mishapes
Monarchy's mistakes, perhaps
Perfect pictures of
Predictable
Misadventures

What everyone tells you
Pre plane departure
Setting one belief in front of another
One foot behind
Is what it does
To your stomach
Shaking heads full of
Heavy sighs

Cares to be taken
Clothes to be carried in case
For climactic changes
Of course
What to withstand
Understand
Undertake
When to be undeterred

When to stand your ground
Back down, barter
Bask
Busk your way through town
What to battle over
Where to bathe and how
When to show the colour
Of your mother's money

How to save a dollar
Raise a rupee
Meditate on more that
You could Be
Do the deed
Be caught in times of need
Phone home and find
No-one waiting for your call

All of this and more
You carry on your back
A rucksack full of love and
Missed kisses
But - the greatest part of this is
What no-one tells you -
What it does
To your heart

What you find
When your mind adjusts
And your eyes unwind
And great gusts of understanding blow you free
When you hand over the key
To your list of demands
And give in
To the easy unplanned

Exploring
Imploring looks
Hook your sympathy
Bait you easily at first
The worst
Are always
The kids
Thing is, how could you deny them?

Soon enough
Is enough
“Sister!”
“Look mister, I ain't no fool
And I ain't a millionaire either -
Leave her alone and go home.”
Thing is, how could you feed them all?

You triumph on trains
Blaspheme the buses
The driver's on drugs
Or a suicide trip
You skip rice-based breakfasts
For weeks
Seek out cereals then
Suddenly...you don't

Chinking chai glasses
Chomping on chocolate
A lot
More than most
Coasting roads
Filled with cows
On a scooter scuffed with sand
And stuffed to bursting point

Dogs with holes in
Infecting imaginations
Over masala dosa
Noses signalling distaste
This taste?
Hmm, tamarind - trees?
Try over there
Between the neem and the new banana circle...

Too many memories to mention
There's always one question
When you return to the beginning
Grinning, they ask
How was it?
But how can you say
It was everything
You've never seen
?

India
Get it?
INDIA!!
Get it India
But be warned...
You may never
Get her
Out-ia
Head

Don't touch me by the tender points
It hurts more than a soul can bear
Be gentle lest the pain doth spread
It moves me on to silent tears
Don't judge me as I let it pass
Let me lie down in bed & writhe
And wish for a reprieve of sorts
Or drug that cures me of this plight
How 'd you know how much it hurts
I have faked on a smile and laugh'd
Sanity hangs loose on edges now
If only I could alter the story's draft
Yet, clarity missing from how it ends
Unforeseen misadventures lie in wait
I have learnt to be at ease; with ache
And strife, this life & dragging weight

Looking through a complex eye
poisoned by countless vials of nitroglycerin
the world sings a familiar tune of
an ineradicable human urge for lethal conflict.

A world view
of culturally intolerant tyrants and a place
where Robin Hood does not exist, instead
his former self sits wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity.
Society now aids the pauper,
who is but a superficial vagabond sitting intrigued by
hopeless people from distant lands.

As the innocent of Beirut lie murdered
the reaper tastes regret,
while bank accounts paint self portraits
instilled by ephemeral yet righteous morality.
Dangerously speeding through the lanes of life
to make it home just before it rains;
the world all encompassing
is never the concern.

Halos hover above diet pills dressed in simple linens
for everything is an easy fix;
lies, hatred, ignorance, and blatant evil,
all can be fixed by ignoring the even lies (the even lines that lie above).

You told me I was your
terra firma
because you could always
count on me to be there
when even you
didn't want to be there

I relished the fact that you
would consider me your
anything
let alone something
that sounded so strong and
beautiful

Your extraplanetary misadventures
in love and lust and
all things fleeting
left your wobbly legs aching for
solid ground

But you should know
I'm here to hold you up
not for you to
walk all over

You found me on
                    Sailing ships,
                    shadows of morning,
                    fading sunsets
                    and grain of stars
                    on sand;
You loved me on my misadventures.

Dubious sense of unresolved ambivalence

Given to implausible suppositions of fragmentation

That distinguishes itself in well meaning solemnities

Of delicious incompetence that evaporates distance

In its poignant lament of darkness

That shadows words of cruelty, indifference and rage

Oh how unbearable those misadventures of piteous overthrows

That cram into brief utterances more meaning

Than language can hold and force a confrontation

Of unresolvable contradictions hidden in such speech

That are the stilling of time, those words that find expression

In a mystic power that transforms darkness into intense light

Whilst blocking out the harsh unforgiving light of everyday

And causes mutation and change of place in disorienting fashion

In seeking a loyalty of angers by shifts of dramatic register

Views its own meaning unstable and problematic

In defense of its own legitimacy

Oh, I had just caught a hint of you in the remnants of my broken memory thumped into me by the shape of your sign on the side of a parked car as I honed my body back to its natural and strong shape. the ritual you started.it  all came flooding back into me by the passing of the breeze over the cliffs above the place you said the words. Though I vowed to slice you away from everything, I knew our eyes locking will always be inevitable. This wasnt it. But it all came flooding back. That hunger, the need, the desire, the look of love and higher places you saw through my eyes. And how we wanted to go there. do you remember that time? it was so close only we were years too late. and Like a fool i began running. running to or from, I wasnt sure but i left and came back purely on a hope, a winged prayer only to send me back to hell and I wasnt afraid to go there. it was your sign, but it wasnt you. it was all i needed to waken my desperate wish to connect with you. Just to stay in the same place and breathe the same air. to find peace in your energy there. I was opened up like never before and forgiveness rang so loud in my ears, it was the one moment where it all could have come undone in me and be the one thing we craved; and you werent even there.

You know as well as I do
that internet dating can have its ups
and downs
and thus, after so many futile meetings
and tragic misadventures
in a domestic UK situation,
I decided to spread my wings
and so I logged on to an Australian website
for lonely kangaroo lovers
yes it was www.blackstump-legover.com.au
where no holes were barred.

And I soon struck up a promising friendship
with someone who sounded like
a real goer, a total slapper,
with no morals whatsover
judging from the photo she posted
taken with a mobile phone
up her skirt
which showed her muffin *****
as well as what she had eaten
for breakfast yesterday,
poking its head out.

We finally agreed to meet
behind the old dunny
in the park where the abos go
to exchange their social security vouchers
for crack *******
or a bottle of Castlemain XXXX
or a quick one up each others' bots
in spite of the pong
on a sunny arvo.

You can imagine how effing disappointed
I was when she arrived
on a trailer attached to her grandson's ute
strapped to a battered gurney
(and almost insensate)
but still ready for a bit of backdoor action
but not from me, no sirree,
thank you very much mate:
I might be desperate, but
I would have had to have
clipped my nose shut with a clothes peg
to get anywhere near her
and my gag reflex simply couldn't cope.

So I bravely dragged the gurney
over to the convenient gap
in the fence overlooking the mighty ravine
and with a gentle shove
I sent her to that sweet place
where peace can be found
and I can still hear her scream
as she bounced off the rocks
accusing me of being illegitimate
before silence reigned
and I smiled in joy.

It only goes to show, O my friends,
that there are female dogs
of the most hideous kind
on every sodding continent
on this dear planet of ours;
and I may as well stick to
a handful of Nivea cream
and a Kleenex, at least the odour
is wholesome.

clean in the filth where the spectre yelps and bleeds
my wrists; bound to betray my hand -
i gather gods, too weak to be
unloved completely -
without vanishing
into blue
what?

spotless in the hell of my blot
in the chambers of my open wound...
i glue glaciers to the sun's heel
and mark time
with shadows -
i cast into other moons  
for lack of a reason
to do otherwise.

in a world
so otherworldly

to love me less
than snails
in clarified
butter

is to play god.

but

you have to be
God's Fool
or the Devil's
yes-man

saying no.

you remark and i flinch in the breeze fantastic.
i blast past it, and return; not unscathed
but ungathered
in the Harvest of our
Misadventures.

I'm an indentured surgeon
cleaving the cancer
from the polyp
of our necessary
illusion.

in this Ocean
I'm not waving...
only drowning
in the wishful.

i barricade tsunamis
to tide-pool
the fathoms of our
fumes.

stone's throw and the water's current, clouds shifting in the valley of the sky above
screams could be heard near
no,
it was more of a giddy falsetto, shouts that sounded too drunk,
it was an all too familiar sound for james an all too familiar person

"look at my wings! im a fairy! im coming home to the beloved land! wait for me fairy sisters!"

he went to the clear to see if he was hallucinating he wasn't
it really was her;
sophia
nine months since they broke up; that tearful separation

for a minute he just stood there at the far end of the river watching his ex girl friend spread her arms and glide near the banks in the bridge chanting and giggling

god, did he miss her voice and her laugh

she was just like how he remembered her, her timeless free spirited soul still intact as if she took her childhood with her as she grew up, clenched tightly in her fists

the moonlight kissed her milky pale skin, bathing it in a dusty sort of blue.
she was all by herself and he could tell that something was off;
like she was only half there, like her soul vacated her vessel and she was talking to someone not there

she seemed disoriented and james wondered if she was getting bad again,

the worry kicking in as soon as he thought about all those nights,
those times they got high and drank too much and drugged themselves, injecting poison they craved into their veins, letting cigarette ashes fall to their feet, tiptoeing about as if by a marionette's force trailing along the synchronized beating of their hearts
his mind and being time travelling, to the motel room they stayed at that summer bursting with heated afternoons and passionate air, the sheets that smelled of their love making, the wooden floor they sat on as he strummed the strings of his beloved guitar, singing to his muse, the balcony where they laid in each other's arms, in awe of the world around, cicadas chirping
their adventures and misadventures where she pretended to be a superhero and had him as her sidekick the times they pretended to be spies on quest and missions-she introduced and dragged him into her colorful magical realm.
she had dog eared, coffee stained colored books piled in the trunk of her car with words and sentences blacked out, renewed into greater poetry. he could've put a bookmark between pages of one of those books, and they could've dived right into it, staying in a chasm of a sappy, lovesick, sensual poem. they could've gone on a quest of slaying monsters and stopping time for eternity. he couldve stopped them from drowning

they were looking for heaven not knowing that heaven is not a places on earth

all he did was pull down the anchor and let her sink as he kept afloat. sure their connection was real and pure. they comfortably had both of their minds and spirits bare around each other they were two kites flying in a parallel motion but the wind dragged them down hurling them recklessly

they were rarely under substances, almost never under the influence of vices. it filled them up like birthday balloons and their love was the needle that caused them to pop. it had reached the point where they were trapped in a psychedelic haze holding on to each other to stay lucid

the drugs took their toll on them resulting to violence, abusive fights
he loved her so much that he built her a house of bricks and cement to protect her from the big bad wolf not knowing that ****** and ******* turned him into a wolf and he huffed and puffed til he blew her down blew her dead

he felt his heart hit the flat line as her heart stopped for seconds in the ambulance that night he felt everything warp into everything he's ever known everything he's ever had, ever los. he felt the drugs warp into her as if she was the side effect instead of the addiction. the drugs gave them the illusion of being alive while remaining two lifeless, misguided souls.

miraculously they were able to revive her back to life but comatosed with only monitors and tubes sustaining her "life".
that night he dreamt of being with her and holding her hand for the last time as they made a pact, the promise; that they would both get better, get help, get rehab, have blood in their bloodstreams again and have normal functioning lives. they parted with a promise and a someday; that someday they'd meet again when things were right and the stars have aligned maybe, maybe. they kissed and touched in one another's presence before they parted in different directions, for freedom for the better it was a dream within reality. he knew she dreamt it too, that they were stars weaved in the same dream.

he walked closer, to where she was, still seemingly trapped in a trance mindlessly but she alarmingly tethered too close to the water, flailing her arms inviting the wind to knock her down and be part of the river, be the tides the rocks skipped. he had to do something

" sophia!" he screamed, her name echoing past the trees and the trailer houses. it was enough or her to look at him with those eyes, the same eyes that said it all before. recognition fleeted for a second before it went blank but she stopped tethering and perched herself on the bridge

he gave her a lift and took her home to the dorm she was newly staying at for the semester (it was hard to get it out of her from her drunken slurs almost like he had to pull her back from space) and on his drive back with a cigarette perched on his lips he thought about the way he laid her down, passed out and how he stayed for a bit longer, letting his fingers linger across her hair spun from golden silk and the lopsided smile that hung in her face while she slept.

he wondered most of all if she really got better, if the dark was behind her and if she was truly beyond it. he really wanted to believe the pictures that lined the walls,pictures of her smiling, with her friends, her family months after the promise.

she did look better, her skin baring a hint of plumpness and had a healthy glow replacing the sagging hollow that lived in it all those months. after the episode he witnessed (she did reek of ***** and had bloodshot eyes and was shaking not to mention the trance she was in), he didn't know if she was only good at keeping up the "better" facade. but he had his fingers crossed

he was about to let himself out, an ache growling in his stomach as they were to be separated again but he guessed it was the closest they would ever be.

"tell james i love him. always"

his head swiveled back to her and she was still tucked asleep. he could've sworn she said it, he couldn't be hearing things-after being eight months clean of substance usage.

he felt the familiar burn of the cigarette, and he threw it out of the window leaving the remnants of the nicotine inside him. he hated himself for lighting one up and keeping a half pack all this time. this was his first successful relapse and it was all because of her. like a ship tied down to an anchor;he was still tied to her, invisible ropes weighing him back to her ghost



she would always be his downfall

Like the pages of a book
We took to read an authors mind
Our lines define us
In a way
They say what sometimes we've forgotten
Or neglected
Or reflected upon many times
Our lines tell us the story
Ourselves in all our glory
As we bolted down that hill on a skateboard
And did somersaults on the concrete
Or slid down steps on plastic sheeting
Left bleeding where the board cut into wrist
When it stopped at the bottom
And we didn't
Our childhood misadventures notwithstanding
We are still standing looking back in time
Through our lines
Our cuts and incisions
Our many decisions that left us souvenirs we can never throw away
But never would anyway
Because what else tells stories like scars do?
Of what we've been through
What we've seen to
And come out the other side
Just to hide our reminders
As if we don't find them satisfying
A blemish on our perfect skin
As if there's such a thing
As if you'd want such a thing
Like you'd bin a book of poetry because of its lines
Or throw out a painting because it was no longer a perfect white canvas
Perfection lies in the imperfection
There is beauty in the brokenness
The flaws in the flawlessness
The differences and nuance
That are lined upon our skin
Akin to lines upon the paper
Taper off towards the end
And then the storytelling starts
For what is art if not a story
And what are lines if not art?

I remember walking miles with
our blackies (big garbage bags)
They were full of cans, a nickel a piece.
We were poor aluminum cowboys.
Kind of like Don Quixote and Sancho.
Chivalry wasn't our thing, but we
didn't shy away from it either.
We certainly had our share of
adventures, and misadventures too.
We headed East into the
glorious tangerine and lavender sky of
our La Mancha/Iowa City.
We should be chasing windmills, and
*****, and cigarette butts;
except late one Summer day,
providence ended it all.
We sat behind our castle
(which closely resembled a grocery store.)
Your face went pallid and you fell on me.
I did C.P.R until the ambulance arrived.
You didn't make it.
I hope there are
adventures in Heaven,
my aluminum cowboy.

Trapped in mediocrity
Wondering whether my tongue will eventually taste the sweetness of immortality
Sometimes I hear the secrets hidden in the silence
Their words pass on tides of ambiguity,
Spoken to be understood by souls of superior beings.

I often sit by the bon fire,
And recite the tales of a human stricken by loneliness
The burning flames are nothing but a symbol of the liberation of the state of euphoria,
Which once brought warmth to the shivers of my flesh.

I fell in love with the idea of sleep
My innocuous thoughts dabble across oceans,
Trying to find the lighthouse which will entice happiness
Allowing me to eradicate darkness,
The darkness which has been embedded within the density of my bones.

The misadventures of a man attempting to break the cycle of mediocrity,
The mystery of his fate is captured within the sands of time.

Let's not trouble You with Me.
Let us squat on the lawn of disremembered things
and picnic the day away, cavorting in the sumptuous.
Deployed like balloons from another world-
More made of Grace than the grit
of our actual lives.
And be on
our way.

Weak in the knees, with solid steel prayers
I'll anchor my full disclosure to the Moon and a gnat.
I'll comb the halls of our misadventures
to find you blithering in the gorgeous
of your wonderful Self.
My love is like an unspoken jewel
that murmurs after your esteem.
You are the ring that binds the soil of my retrospection,
And the very thing that amplifies
the joy of my shipwreck
at Thee.

I'd feel so at home in Wyoming;
Married to my television
Cigarettes for breakfast
I'm at peace with my shaking
Clipping branches of my tree
To feed my precious pets

I never played the game
Rolling dice around my teeth
But I keep my eyes on the window
Let the creeping wind in my belly
Be all that makes sense
Thrown like a doll in the corner
Unblinking for the longest time
Measured by the shift and click
Twisted legs coiled like cables
Sealing Matthew into his box

America's fables never spoken
Her reputation and misadventures undeserved
Fit like latex on an amateur surgeon
My cardboard house unfolded
Everything in a tanned leather briefcase
I just forgot the combination
827 - 125 and the button slides

Why can't I leave my things in a crate
And ship myself off to a Grecian island?
I could be sung to sleep
Just as in my room
But now, my dear Johnny, Oldboy,
It's gloaming on Elysium
My chest is still beaten upon
I file the cold edges round
Empty another carton and call it a day

So, now,  my father you stand alone,
Inside your world, your silent zone,
With weary eyes you consume the room,
Your body has mastered the eventual gloom.

Through mindless years you toiled the Earth,
Each day with repetition, your pain gave birth,
You looked to the seasons to show you how,
What will you do, since impending death is now?

Neglected dreams lay wasting away,
The times you wished the words to say,
With lack of love you hurt those who cared,
The misadventures no longer there.

The loves of life who passed slippery on by,
With nights of regret, your soul still cried,
When on the brink of madness, you thought to say,
There's retribution with much hope left to pay.

So, stoically you now sit in the revolving chair,
Such weather-worn eyes, you remain and stare,
While waiting like a lifeless, worn, lost, angry man,
You endure the moment, the one last stand.

It seemed as if,
you fell into my blade.

Searing pain, screaming
my name.
Hand gripping chest, and finger
points to me.
I'm to blame?
I'm to blame.

Bitter.
Sweet.
Your eyes running,
while you stay stationary.
I lick your tears,
because...

I've waited;
menacing stares are dry,
there isn't need,
for moisture.
Solidity gone, against,
soluble grain.
I've waited for your tears;
I've missed them.

But in the end,
when your misadventures,
become takes of legend,
I will take pleasure.
A tale is a tale,
but a corpse is a tally.