Got some hope today.
It felt like a tingle.
In my insides somewhere.
This was familiar.
I was reminded that the world
In which I was born,
Was just as ****** as now.

Somehow, we're muscling on.

Nucleur threats,
Idealogical jets,
With invasions, wars and debts.
I kept abreast of the U.S.S.R.
Covered heads beneath school desks,
Bent over likeVesuvians.
Korea, Viet Nam,
And on and on;
Granada, not Canada,
Look what happened in Iran.
Did you see them hang Sadam?
I can still hear the alarms.

We still keep muscling on.

Pilsner cap switch blade
tie dye and piccolo
greasers and freaks
with platform feet
muscling in
on the bow legged hoofer
tapping
Bursey Hill Tram

Diamond tuft console
mullets n' ****
angels and saints
(unrestrained)
appropriately trimmed
as 3 mile wreaks havoc
on the nickers and
fighters of penn

Bangers and home boys
hookahs and sheiks
hostile geeks
breaking knuckles and jaws
on the caners and skinners
who are locked
and grinding the root

Desert boot foothills
boardwalk jeans
rainbows and sea fairs
and psychedelic dreams
(the platinum queens
jamming it hard
on the jade room floor)

8 tracks
and fender packs
the hottest summer days
psychedelic haze
center hall, graffiti scrawl
(sinister yet refined!)
covering the subtle
yet striking third ****

Brunswick cues
and red man chew
350 blocks
(on a solid Chevy - stock)
monkeys and beatles
and laugh in scenes
pastel dreams
from the long and coveted
velvet scroll

I

I see the boys of summer in their ruin
Lay the gold tithings barren,
Setting no store by harvest, freeze the soils;
There in their heat the winter floods
Of frozen loves they fetch their girls,
And drown the cargoed apples in their tides.

These boys of light are curdlers in their folly,
Sour the boiling honey;
The jacks of frost they finger in the hives;
There in the sun the frigid threads
Of doubt and dark they feed their nerves;
The signal moon is zero in their voids.

I see the summer children in their mothers
Split up the brawned womb's weathers,
Divide the night and day with fairy thumbs;
There in the deep with quartered shades
Of sun and moon they paint their dams
As sunlight paints the shelling of their heads.

I see that from these boys shall men of nothing
Stature by seedy shifting,
Or lame the air with leaping from its hearts;
There from their hearts the dogdayed pulse
Of love and light bursts in their throats.
O see the pulse of summer in the ice.

II

But seasons must be challenged or they totter
Into a chiming quarter
Where, punctual as death, we ring the stars;
There, in his night, the black-tongued bells
The sleepy man of winter pulls,
Nor blows back moon-and-midnight as she blows.

We are the dark derniers let us summon
Death from a summer woman,
A muscling life from lovers in their cramp
From the fair dead who flush the sea
The bright-eyed worm on Davy's lamp
And from the planted womb the man of straw.

We summer boys in this four-winded spinning,
Green of the seaweeds' iron
Hold up the noisy sea and drop her birds,
Pick the world's ball of wave and froth
To choke the deserts with her tides,
And comb the county gardens for a wreath.

In spring we cross our foreheads with the holly,
Heigh ** the blood and berry,
And nail the merry squires to the trees;
Here love's damp muscle dries and dies
Here break a kiss in no love's quarry,
O see the poles of promise in the boys.

III

I see you boys of summer in your ruin.
Man in his maggots barren.
And boys are full and foreign to the pouch.
I am the man your father was.
We are the sons of flint and pitch.
O see the poles are kissing as they cross.

If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.

Shall it be male or female? say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
If I were tickled by the hatching hair,
The winging bone that sprouted in the heels,
The itch of man upon the baby's thigh,
I would not fear the gallows nor the axe
Nor the crossed sticks of war.

Shall it be male or female? say the fingers
That chalk the walls with greet girls and their men.
I would not fear the muscling-in of love
If I were tickled by the urchin hungers
Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve.
I would not fear the devil in the ****
Nor the outspoken grave.

If I were tickled by the lovers' rub
That wipes away not crow's-foot nor the lock
Of sick old manhood on the fallen jaws,
Time and the ***** and the sweethearting crib
Would leave me cold as butter for the flies
The sea of scums could drown me as it broke
Dead on the sweethearts' toes.

This world is half the devil's and my own,
Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl
And curling round the bud that forks her eye.
An old man's shank one-marrowed with my bone,
And all the herrings smelling in the sea,
I sit and watch the worm beneath my nail
Wearing the quick away.

And that's the rub, the only rub that tickles.
The knobbly ape that swings along his ***
From damp love-darkness and the nurse's twist
Can never raise the midnight of a chuckle,
Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast
Of lover, mother, lovers, or his six
Feet in the rubbing dust.

And what's the rub? Death's feather on the nerve?
Your mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss?
My Jack of Christ born thorny on the tree?
The words of death are dryer than his stiff,
My wordy wounds are printed with your hair.
I would be tickled by the rub that is:
Man be my metaphor.

Semi-
——-

Something new, in our years of partnership,

during

the early morning semi’s, the half awake, yet
mostly asleep, passageway from rest to wake,
as per usual, I am awake before her, to write,
to think, to read, to do my variety of early morn
chores, but today, her semi is populated by a
new concern, an alert, mind programmed, silent,
no chirp, no beep, just human punctual new instinct,

let us
check if my man is alive and breathing, rub his
thankfully copious-headed hair & air supply,
rub-a-dub,
once, repeat twice, thrice, sense his beating brain,
confirming the night passage, always dangerous,
completed safely, for she feels my warmth, hears
my eyes-crinkle smiling, and ascertains, the
continuation of my existence and the statistical
probability, (her occupational hazard and habit)

that when

she crosses fulsome into the living day,
awakensgladly, that her not-too-hot-black
coffee, will be
mister milkman delivered on schedule with
a bedside delivery like clockwork-blonde, with a
half sheet of enwrapping paper towel within some
morning fruit, to  ensure that her coffee will have some company…

while she dances a beloved tango in her semi-,

I am:

in my only~pretending post-tense,
semi complimentary state,
mentally scrambling scribbling half a dozen
eggs of new poem ideas, mad pursuing these
very words, my way of saying good morning girl,
my beating heart muscling me to be sure I-remain,
in the good company of the Oompa-Loompas,
and yours too!

Prologue



MyBar. The first time I heard that name, I remember thinking, "who the **** would name their club 'MyBar?'"

Three months, and innumerable trips later, I find myself thinking, "who the **** would enjoy going to MyBar?"

I am not included in that set of answers. Yet here I am anyway, stowing my ID and half muscling, half falling through the front door. Underclassmen from every clique, packed crack to **** on a 16x16 dance floor, in a dark, dank, dive that even the townies don't bother with. The pumped up pulses of the beat can be felt deep down in the bones, as the neon lights cast perverse shadows onto the throbbing masses. The basketball team stands against the wall as some of the more negotiable ladies in the club line up to publicly proclaim their devotion to our athletics department by very nearly, and perhaps occasionally, riding them like jockeys in a steeplechase. The players, sadly, likely felt akin to judges at the Westminster.

The sounds and sights assault the senses, mingling none to well with the excess of alcohol coursing through my system. Disoriented and dangerously uncoordinated, I slide seamlessly through the tightly packed crowd, the gyrating bodies of my fellow classmen gently propelling me deeper like a living, breathing conveyor belt.

Nothing in my appearance hints at the fact that I feel barely able to stand. Though I was a freshman, I was no stranger to getting falling down drunk, and had developed enough of a tolerance to the strange brew to maintain my composure under all but the most intense circumstances, as I would discover during Spring Weekend.

Despite the oppressively tight mass of bodies, the uncontained volume levels, and the array of lights, I manage to focus my intoxicated attention upon the girl in front me. She has hair the color of a glass of bourbon, and a temperament to match. Dark brown eyes, deep red lips, and lightly tanned skin covered up on this evening by a leopard print top and skinny jeans rounded out the package of the most beautiful lady I had ever managed to gain the interest of. Despite her sharp features, she was actually kind and generous. Most of the time. The other times, well, we'll get to that.

This woman is the only reason I'm here tonight. The same could be said for any other night that I come out here. But there's no saying no to her.  Even if it weren't for the fact that I was raised to honor my mates wishes (within reason), it simply wouldn't be worth the headache to disagree. If she wants something, she'll get it, and it's better to have her come home happy than in devil driver mode. Besides, it isn't all bad.

Most people would call what we're doing "dancing." I would call it "public dry *******." But these are the times we live in, I suppose. In any case, I've certainly had worse nights than tonight.

Later on as the crowd thinned out, I was just about to do the same, smoking a cigarette on the snow covered deck around the front of the building. Clothed coitus can really drain a guys reserves. Especially one who's only nourishment in the past five hours has been Jaegermeister and cigarettes.

Our little group begins it's exhausted yet boisterous journey back to the dorm rooms. My girl friend of three months, much like every other night we drink, is absolutely twisted. Propped up between two of us, she laughs uncontrollably as she sways from side to side, bucking us off balance as she does. By the time we get through the door, she's calmed down enough to be inside of a building.  Stripped to our skivvies, we climb into bed and turn off the lights. My roommate has yet to return from wherever he's disappeared to, so before we pass out, well, **** I was there I know what happened.

Anyway, she's just nodded off to sleep when I notice a smell wafting through the hallway. Were I in the comfort of my own home and smelled this smell, it would simply have meant that I left my popcorn in for a few seconds too long. However, being where I am,  I know better than to-- EEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHHHH

******* THREE AM ******* FIRE ALARMS!

Welcome to St. Bonaventure.

No, I don't want to write a sonnet;
to self-lock in an octave
only clasping a rusty key
-volta-
leading to another office cubicle
efficiently labelled sestet
for its six undone quotas
waiting coolly for my
calculating.

I want to untuck my shirt, Whitman;
to unleash words to gather at seams
then tear them open
like bursting blood cells crowding
out of a wound.
I do not want to fit
flesh into a 'perfect' Barbie membrane,
let me stretch the skin taut as sheets
so I can feel the redness
and gouge underneath.

Clarity glazed the Classical sonata
opaque; staves of controlled fantasy
so imaginable, like an illogically
round orange, sliced
in concaves fat
with pulp, each ripeness methodically
connected by thin breath threads.

This is why we have madness, need it;
bless the ****** of brilliance in Beethoven
symphonies, the metallic muscling
of Ginsberg verses, electronic with strange beauty, holy
and unholy, every ****** mess
in between

The heart can't suffice
by merely inhaling
glitter; I can't dare remember the sane
pretty sighing of a Petrarchan
uttering; canned love,
a predictable malaise packaged
neatly in a bland tome, most likely
beige, with the fashionable odor
of bookish age

And so, serif-writing sweetheart
please don't ask
me to write a sonnet.

too comfortable to tuck my shirt in,
I won't touch I won't touch I won't touch

nobody poets anymore

because to poet
is

to make it strange again

admit it - if you stare long enough

your reflection in the mirror tickles
the ribs of 1-to-1

turns a laugh into a cry
a real hard good cry
washing the world of wry

to poet is
to show

the sheer

terror

that is
alive

it's not outside
it writhes
under the molecule

it tumbles the tumult

dear you
your tools will not will forever

the unfisted wisp now blurred
beneath word is curtains
for your House of Horror Maintained

it beats like a busybody
muscling and torquing just below the breastbone

of your
you

the i is not it anymore

it is
othering
peeking behind
the beat-up chair of your so-called

real

there's wires behind there

they lead some
where

I always become
Nostalgic
When I'm deep into the bowels
Of nature.

At first I thought
It was Camp Wildwood
Coming back to me --

Capture the Flag --
My crush and I, Sarah,
In the woods alone
Using inside-jokes and "strategy"
As a knife
For the tension
Swelling up inside of us
a forbidden bloom that never was --

But it isn't that.

It's the genes inside of me
Ancient ones
Deep Prehistoric spindles lit
Crimson tooth claws laws
Of an order
With no defined border
Knuckles whitened ***** firing
Mounting and
Muscling out the moral

FROM THE FLAGSTONES 
 
This concrete town with no guts,
no grit where we can only smirk
as galoshered feet slip ‘n’
slide in and out our café where
exhalations of icy conversations
mix with the fog and cigarette smoke.
 
It’s a damp riverbank town
border with riptides
sneak currents
no watchtowers no walls
an escape for the committed
or reckless – the next country
a lucky swim away.
 
You draw down
panelaks, teetering like headstones
(that lost their plots
a regime ago)
pen in flagstones and millstones
flower tubs filled
with butts and dead dogs
tarted up with cans and stencils
subjects of your studies in pencil.
 
Nature’s only concession
(so far as I can see)
is this wedge like a warm slice of pizza -
four fall trees jutting out of the bar
where dogs curl up in corners
and mist pushes in fishermen
selling trout -
 the toxic confetti
swirling around the passing
procession of Saturday weddings
dragging monochrome trains
drawn into this twilight
fugue whisked by an accordian player,
guests laughing back at us
while you’re smirking back at them
cocooned in wine and tuica
almost  lost in your sketch
smudging *** ash for sky
dreamy with relaxed fatigue
of travel and infatuation.
 
Your pad’s our field dressing
that could work for a while
before the gangrene sets back in
so I’d like to amputate this souvenir wedge
for my scraps book.
 
I watch you listening out for the shanty
from the flagstones – about weeds
delicate, green, undamaged,
muscling through the cracks
in the concrete
drawn up to the cut where
we also look effortless and a little green.
 
Tomorrow we head for the border
and only one of us can swim.

place your hands on either side of my ribs
and feel my
pinky-stretched muscles
twist and grind with the earth’s orbits

tap your finger on my temple
and listen to the
bones hollowed-out
by termites that run on memories

hold my wrists above my head
and look at
the stretched skin of my stomach
so translucent
you can see the treasure map I etched all over me

these bodies are sponges
absorbing the wind
into our hips
and sprawling our fingers to try and
catch the air and stick it back into our lungs
muscling through the salty waves
that stain our cheeks a raw pink
and erode our invincible confidence
and chip our pearly smile

we grab for our surroundings
with a dying necessity
and sew them into ourselves
so that we are patched into an identity

so when we are tired of being ragdolls
pieced together by our triumphs and failures
we begin to choose any fabric
regardless of the color, shape, or size
just to cover the holes we have created

then we face the mirror to see our what is left

we are disappointed not by our own mouths
but the ones on the faces behind us
looking past their own holes and into our own

where you can see
the taught fibers of stretched muscles
the tunnels termites have created in ivory bones
and pale skin pulled tight around panting lungs.

green tips
are showing
all over the garden

buding lime on
stick bare branches

muscling their way
up through
red chocolate soil

peeking out
of rocky crevices

all seeking
light and warmth

chlorophyll seeking argent
hope seeking fulfillment
winter aceding to spring

i’m too tired to fight subway doors
muscling, pushing,
shoving my way through

maybe if i learned to hold my breath
duck out of the way
ignore the clock ticking
in the back of my head
faster, faster, faster

but the urgency of meaningless work
pushes me forward
and my arms start to groan
under the weight of door-like
indentations

There is no more alluring scene to attend to, than to make love with
who you love. Passings of the heart in actions. Exchanging parts of
the soul. Denying loneliness in this existence. Forgetting Death’s own
landscape. **** holiness, smoking ancient dogma, saturating poetry
with poetic images. Obscure now. On purpose, turned away from
everyday life. Orbiting words, to begin the process of expressing love.
It’s only done in actions, muted silence, or speaking in passionate
words. Life without thee, a life like everybody else. Dull, local, boring
and aimless, as insecurity to fit in heightens. Lover, as we continue to
live, we are, a paradox to this haunting world, muscling up to mocking
time. As peace drops and stays within us, I’m not longer afraid to live,
because of you, I am no longer afraid to die. I belong to you.
https://www.amazon.com.au/Killing-Philosophy-Reflection-Darcy-Prince-ebook/dp/B07F9QVCW4/ref=sr12?ie=UTF8&qid=1531092503&sr=8-2&keywords=darcy+prince

Oh Sophie, no Sophie
So sorry, you left
crystal blue persuasions
No warning, you left
my coral feet reefed, fleeting
for cold fired bricks streets,
in heels on the walls, well lit
Too bright for you to see:
these red lit walls

and Sophie, do recall
better moons saw, my heart
teeming with an ambient glow
in our seasons, when we lay
on the hills of Soufrière
So extravagant those eruptions
You trembled when lava poured
freely into the Port of Amsterdam
No walls, no *****.... Sophie?

How, my dutch, now?
These red lit walls,
so lewd and menstruating
stands as glass windows between us
and these strong, macho *****
forged with Finish arms,
like Heini Koivuniemi look-alikes
muscling my heavenly pleas
to the hellish red walls in De Wallen

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                   Being an Eloi is Okay,
           But Make Sure the Smoke Alarms Have Fresh Batteries

Some poets are Eloi, deconstructing this
And disconnecting that in weak free verse
Between the reiki and the pilates
Trying to find an existential voice

And other poets are grim Morlocks, almost,
Through muscling chaos into meaning and light
Between the night shift and the morning cup
Trying to build a voice that speaks with strength

To shape lack of meaning into meaning
That is neither this nor that, but itself

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                                  Ano­ther Day of Rioting

There they go again, screaming at each other
In a land of plenty, but all wanting more
Through posturing, threatening, bullying
And blaming each other for the wreckage

There they go again, screaming at each other
Bluejays and cardinals are the noisiest of all
And squirrels muscling in on the action
Crows criticizng from branches up high

There they go again, screaming each other
Around their seed-feeder beneath their oak

Muscling past yards and yards of clothes
over yards and yards of shoes, I reached
the back corner of her closet, dark, dusty,
deserted. I gently moved the shoes
out of my way, looking for what might
lie there, hidden, in boxes long forgotten.

I discovered a fiery red opal, once
the centerpiece of a magnificent
ring, but now lying loose from its
setting, stuck amid the collected
detritus of a long, luxuriant life.
Opals were her favorite gems,

After diamonds. So I picked it up,
wiped the dust away and dropped
it in my pocket, where the opal
seemed to burn with zeal to
see the light again after so many
years of darkness. I could feel it sparkle.

Its beauty reminded me of hers,
fiery, bubbly, lighting up at
the slightest hint of wit. She laughed her
way through life, perennially
an optimist, finding the future rich
with possibilities of goodness

And love. Out of her closet at last,
I walked into the front room
and placed the opal on the mantle.
It shone, as expected, in the low-
lying rays of the late-afternoon sun.
It would be the perfect stone, I knew

to lay on her grave.

Two brothers, who don't get along
Never see eye to eye different lives
The good brother working his way through
The bad brother forces his ways
Trying to take over muscling others
One talked about everyone making drama
The other minded his mouth walked away
Crossing paths treating one another like strangers
Brothers should look out for each other not oppose go against one another

UP ABOVE THE WORLD SO HIGH

The three Blind Mice.

The Three Blind Mice.

They didn’t tell  ya  the same thing twice
(&             they wasn’t             very nice) .

And they wasn’t blind...see? ..that was just a blind.
(They wore shades to hide their eyes)      
Maestros with a switch - blade knife.

They ran all the vice
& any opposition had already lost their lives.

But fk it...lately... the farmer’s wife
(it was rumoured that she had done
the old man in... taken over everything)      
and was now muscling in on  

their  territory.

They didn’t like it

They  weren’t used to being told
what they could ‘n’ couldn’t do.

Confrontation & respect was due.

Both ***** bore a tattoo
that proclaimed in Latin:  

“Trouble & strive! ”
& “F* you! ”

Her other tattoo(just above her ***** hair)      
stated in mock Gothic script:

”Abandon hope all ye who enter here! ”

One night the Farmer’s wife decided
to  separate   the men   from    the mice

Had ‘em: -  rubbed out

courtesy of a ****** known locally only
as “Slasher Gore.”

Now the three blind mice don’t see so good no more.

See...

...being dead ain’t good for the sight.

Ain’t dat right...?

Meanwhile back at the ranch
meet the new big Mama of Vice

T H E    F A R M E R ’ S    W I F E

just like it spells out in nasty neon light

twinkling...twinkling

  
   obscuring the starlight.

UP ABOVE THE WORLD SO HIGH

The three Blind Mice.

The Three Blind Mice.

They didn’t tell  ya  the same thing twice
(&             they wasn’t             very nice) .

And they wasn’t blind...see? ..that was just a blind.
(They wore shades to hide their eyes)      
Maestros with a switch - blade knife.

They ran all the vice
& any opposition had already lost their lives.

But fk it...lately... the farmer’s wife
(it was rumoured that she had done
the old man in... taken over everything)      
and was now muscling in on  

their  territory.

They didn’t like it

They  weren’t used to being told
what they could ‘n’ couldn’t do.

Confrontation & respect was due.

Both ***** bore a tattoo
that proclaimed in Latin:  

“Trouble & strive! ”
& “F* you! ”

Her other tattoo(just above her ***** hair)      
stated in mock Gothic script:

”Abandon hope all ye who enter here! ”

One night the Farmer’s wife decided
to  separate   the men   from    the mice

Had ‘em: -  rubbed out

courtesy of a ****** known locally only
as “Slasher Gore.”

Now the three blind mice don’t see so good no more.

See...

...being dead ain’t good for the sight.

Ain’t dat right...?

Meanwhile back at the ranch
meet the new big Mama of Vice

T H E    F A R M E R ’ S    W I F E

just like it spells out in nasty neon light

twinkling...twinkling

  
   obscuring the starlight.

Huge powerplay, muscling, parading intimidation.
Hidden fragility, ego, feeble intention.