CHAPTER ONE

My geographic movements during the past year could be called “A Tale of Two Couches.” So as June draws to a close, I assume the position here again on Couch California. I am back in Hemet, the place the smug among us call Hemetucky--as if there was nothing a couple of Mint Juleps and a **** of Blue Grass wouldn’t cure. It is the year of our Lord, 2014: so far an interesting year for women. There was a woman who wore socks to bed. There was always my long-time, here today-gone tomorrow, long time companion, currently teaching somewhere remote on the Big Rez, a southwestern Navajo concentration camp near the 4 Corners.  Next, there’s my current object of affection, that fine and frisky lady from The Bronx by way of Bernalillo--currently at home in Laguna Beach, Orange County. Trixie: my main squeeze at the moment.

And now, completely out of the ******* blue this afternoon, my cell phone rings and it’s ******* Juanita--my all-time favorite woman, Juanita Mi Favorita de La Quinta--a Coachella Valley town and desert wadi, extending its lucrative winter tourist season to become a significant, year-round retirement venue and a robust service economy feeding off it.  Juanita arrived there in the late 80s, in middle of her early forties.  She was unemployed, homeless, just a suitcase to her name and a two-year old toddler in tow. Her parents were there, as was her Aunt Peggy.  Juanita was always Peggy’s favorite niece, her favorite child, actually, Peggy herself being childless, never married.  Aunt Peggy put her maternal instincts to work on Juanita Rodriguez, her Sister Rosalia’s second favorite twin daughter.

Maria, Rosalia’s first favorite daughter, Juanita’s twin sister—MARIA: lives in Newport Beach and acts as an extra in many commercial ads shot in southern California and elsewhere, an irony never without sting for Juanita. “Que lastima!” Poor Juanita: as her would-be Hollywood Movie star aspirations disintegrated over the years, along with her unrealized lower expectations to be TV star, and even those semi-glamorous modeling gigs at trade shows and fairs—the elephant’s graveyard of the acting profession—failed to materialize, and now her celebrity habitat shrunken even further, to that sporadic but consistent mockery of stardom, I refer to any would-be thespian’s ignominious one-celled visual protozoan: The Extra Call List.  And—*******-- what happens next? Juanita’s sister Maria starts getting these parts, starts getting hired by filling out a ******* postcard, starts getting paid to look good in the background. *******: no professional education or instruction, no agent, and no need to **** off both the producer, the producer’s cousin Morey, the director and the director’s wife’s huge Golden retriever, Genghis--actually a mighty handsome animal--or needing to spill $4K on that Derma-brasion, Juanita inflicted on herself last year.

Juanita, as you already know, was the second favorite daughter and the second favorite twin of the family. She became the third favorite child in her three-child family upon the arrival of her slick baby brother Nico-- the Golden Child, who grew up to be a glib Merrill-Lynch stockbroker, office and residence, Beverly Hills 90112.  (Enter forcefully into the narrative, His Nibs himself, Sir Nicodemus of Hollywood, Juanita and Maria’s baby brother Nico. He speaks: “Excuse me, stockbroker my ***, as it says in a 11 point Rockwell Boldfont, right here on my gold-leaf embossed business card: Senior Large Capital Investment Counselor.”)

No, Juanita had a hard time just treading water in that Cleveland shark tank. And though she lacked nothing in the cuteness department, she had this one fatal flaw, namely, the gift of ***** and sass and a reflex to speak truth to power. Juanita: rejected by Rosalia as a threat to her hegemony as Boss of the Girl’s Club, was cast adrift on a tempestuous childhood cruel Montserrat sea, out there on the briny deep . . .  
                

                                      



High Seas: where many a tuna has a Sorry Charlie moment: “Star-Kist don’t want no tuna with good taste; Star-Kist wants a tuna that tastes good.”

Finally, Juanita is rescued, taken aboard the Good/Soul Aunt Peggy—that wayward bark Elisabeta Rodriguez, home-ported in Southside, Chicago, Illinois—the rescue at sea performed in classy, rather low-key manner; no Andrea Doria drama, but understated:

{Camera One, Helicopter above, zooms over turbulent ocean surface. Peggy, an oasis of calm, aboard the raft Kon Tiki with Thor Heyerdahl and his crew, floats by, whispering, “Going my way, Honey? Climb aboard. Have a homemade oatmeal cookie and a small glass tumbler of Jack Daniels.” Okay, no, that’s not fair. Sure Aunt Peggy drank, but never got round to offering you a drink until you were well into your 30s. Let’s just say she offered you a warm glass of milk, the mother’s milk deprived you by your mother, her sister Rosalia. Dear Aunt Peggy: a seasoned survivor herself, flawed by early childhood deafness and grotesque speech.  Yet, she had refused to settle for life in an asylum. She made a go at life.  She learned; she prospered; she flourished. And when the time came, she was there for you in the Coachella Desert, there for her feisty niece Juanita Ann.  Aunt Peggy: a loving spirit personified, became Juanita’s special confidant and counselor, her personal cheer squad of one. Juanita, of course, a former cheerleader herself--an early hint of greatness to be sure, a highlight, perhaps the highlight of her life, shown off every Halloween, still celebrated at American high schools each Fall. She is the Principal’s secretary at a huge suburban high school in Indio. Each Halloween, if the date falls on a school day, Juanita arrives for work wearing that scrupulously preserved, vintage 1966 cheerleader uniform, looking real foxy still, snug now in all the right places. Eternal Truth: Juanita has always and will always be good looking. Life with Juanita is perpetual “ooh la-la.”

So, I am on the couch that afternoon, reading more of Gramsci’s prison notebooks, specifically the philosophy he calls “Praxis.”  Completely out of the ******* blue, Juanita calls me on a RESTRICTED phone, as I said, Juanita, a torch I’ve kept burning for years, flaring up like a refinery flame--oil still very much in the present energy mix--hope springing eternal as they say, and instantly my mission in life is rekindling our lost love. Juanita’s conceived her mission prior to her phone call:  using me to keep her son from being whacked by the local Eme--the Mexican Mafia—that ethnic-pride social club that the RICO-squad-- using family tree socio-grams and other expensively-printed graphics, the one RICO keeps trying to convince us is some sort of organized crime conspiracy. The Mexican Mafia: like everything else practical and utilitarian in this world: THAT’S ITALIAN! And, if you are starting to sense a bit of ethnic chauvinism on, between & below the lines, you are barking up the right tree.
                                                           ­     
      
                                                            
(AUTHOR’S POST-SCRIPT EDIT: And, an ad for dog food right here? Not the best choice of sponsors, perhaps, at the moment. Juanita was far off from the ****** ***** that start looking not half-bad at 2:30 in the glazy morning, not anywhere near those beasts you find lingering in the airport bars you usually frequent near closing time on Saturday nights. No, I remind you that Juanita was all “ooh la-la.” In my next printing—and my Lord, there have been so many, haven’t there, Paulie “Eat-a-Bag-of-****” Muldoon? I will change out the Alpo ad, plugging in a spot for Aunt Jemima pancake syrup or Betty Crocker whipped cream, you know, something more apropos.)

Juanita, I really must hand it to you. You showed the greatest staying power, year after year as I moved further and further away from La Quinta, California. Juanita: you embraced what was good in me, ignored my flaws and strengthened me with your love for so many years. As far as you and Peggy, I guess it was a case of the “apple not falling far from the tree” one of many endearing Midwestern metaphors you taught me.  Peggy taught you, taught you to be kind and then you taught me. No matter what bizarre venue I pulled out of my ***, you showed above-average staying power, continued to visit me wherever I went, Casa Grande & Buckeye, Arizona, Appalachia, West Virginia, and even Italy, when I thought I’d try Europe again after so many years.  With each move, each time, Juanita renewed her commitment to the relationship. Meanwhile, I continued to test her, quantifying her dedication, undermining her sense of mission to disprove my worldview on the expendability of women. Surely, you know that one: the unreliability of women, women who disappear without saying goodbye. That old deeply etched conviction to never get attached to a woman, any woman, based on the empirical fact that women have been known to suddenly die, a fact seared into my still tender metal by the surprise death of my mother on 11 January 1962.

1962. It was already an insecure world, to wit:  The Cuban Missile Crisis. Nikita Khrushchev, in his time both Dr. No and Dr. Evil, namely the Premier whom we Baby Boomers saw as Boogey Man of All Time (Although Putin is showing potential, lately)—the Kennedy ****** (what else could you call it?). All these events scary, whether or not I got the chronology right . . . I remained on high alert for any threat to my delicate adolescent psyche.  My mother-Rosa Teresa Sekaquaptewa-died at 2 o’clock in the morning, screaming in agony while apologizing to my father for not having his dinner on the table when he walked in from work that prior afternoon. She’d already been in bed since noon, attended by two of my aunts--both my father’s sisters--who loved their Hopi sister-in-law, Rosa.  Also present was Lafcadio Smirnoff, M.D.--last of the house call medicine men--a dapper, mustachioed, swarthy gentleman, misdiagnosing her abdominal pain as a 24-hour virus, while she bled out internally for at least eight more hours, her whimpers alternated with screams, well into the wee hours of the morning.

I was upstairs in that dormer bedroom listening to her die. An hour later, Father Numb-nuts of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish teleported in, beaming directly into my bedroom from the parish rectory.  Father Seamus Numb-nuts, an illuminated Burning Bush . . . not quite the bush I ‘d conjured at other times, so many times alone with Gwen Wong, ******* Playmate of the Year, 1961, one of Hefner’s hot centerfolds. No, give me a ******* break, you momo! Whacking off is the last thing on a libidinous, adolescent guinea’s brain when his mama is being tortured and killed by God. Even Alexander Portnoy, Philip Roth’s early avatar would have drawn the wanking line at that unforgettable moment.

No, perhaps what I’d had in mind was The Burning Bush Golf Course where so much of Fletcher Kneble’s political mischief and government shenanigans got cooked up. You remember his books, some of the Cold War’s finest: Seven Days in May, Vanished, etc.

Or better yet, perhaps the greatest political slogan of the 20th century: “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” Thank you, Jesse. “Thank you, Reverend Jackson,” I slip into my Excellence in Broadcasting mode, my very own private Limbaugh. Announcing my on- air arrival is El Rushbo’s unmistakable, totally recognizable bass line bumper, courtesy of Chrissie Hynde’s Pretenders band mate, guitarist Tony Butler: Dum, dum, dum-dum, Da-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum-da-dum-dum. Single, “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders
Rush Limbaugh Song– YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=SScW9r0y3c4

I become Reverend Jackson. I emerge from the vapors, an obscure abyss of deep family pangs and disappointments, ever-diminishing public relevance and fade to black (no pun intended) and media oblivion. The only thing left is that line:  “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” You will always own that line, Jesse--true political genius (to wit: Rainbow Coalition) Jackson that you are, despite El Rush-Bo’s virulent anti-Black animus, his predilection to mock you, Al Sharpton, Corey Booker, Barack “Hussein” Obama, and any other professional ***** in America. Isn’t it time someone came right out and tagged Mr. Limbaugh as the Father Coughlin of our time.

Meanwhile back in The Bronx, enter another man of the cloth:  It’s Seamus Numb-nuts, making one of his many well-documented spectral visitations, his splendiferous miracles and wonders. How much longer will the Vatican ignore this humble Bronx priest, this epitome of Sainthood; this reverent man, lacking only the stigmata for a unanimous consent vote? Quote the Numb-nuts: “God Works in Mysterious Ways.” An old standard to be sure, but a lovely, all-purpose bromide for explaining why evil exists in our world. Needless to say, I was underwhelmed; I lost God at that moment, consequently shooting myself in the foot--metaphorically-speaking-condemning myself to an unshielded life, life OUT THE BUSHES!  I went forth into the world without God, without that handy divine crutch, that Andy Devine metaphor for when one’s legs grow weary: a puff of smoke, a reverb twang and a nasty frog croaking “Hi-ya, Kids. Hi-ya, Hi-ya. Hi-ya.”

   Andy's Gang - Pasta Fazooli vs. Froggy the Gremlin - YouTube
► 3:55► 3:55
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H35odPm7b3w Aug 8, 2012 - Uploaded by jmgilsinger
Froggy the Gremlin -Tuba ... Andy Devine (Aug 24, 1952)

Life for me became lonely and purposeless. And probably explains my susceptibility to military discipline and a subsequent career in clandestine government service. In 1968--the very day I turned nineteen, September 25th of that year—that fateful day when I should have shot myself in the foot—literally not metaphorically--earning that coveted 4-F physical rejection, a draft deferment to be desired, that 4-F classification of unfitness for duty, a necessary loophole in U.S. conscript service law.  The Draft: last used during that great commonwealth Cold War purge, that culling out of the unwashed, uneducated children of immigrants, that cut-rate, discount, lower socio-economic ***** bank—the only bank where after you make a deposit, you lose interest, to wit: most Black, Hispanic and Poor White Trash parents.  We were cannon fodder, many of us got to be planted at Arlington and other holy American shrines, still wrapped in black or olive drab leak-proof body bags, doing our generational bit to strengthen the gene pool left behind. A debt, some would say, we owed the country and, given the sorry state of the global wicket, increasingly an obligation to the species. And if I had to predict an outcome, Fascism in America will arrive riding the white horse of the environmental, anti-nuclear Bolsheviks. One could argue that Communism has moved so far left on the political spectrum that it’s now the far right.  Concoct a legislative policy goal, accomplish it legally as the bill becomes Law, signed by the President, endorsed and blessed by The U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the land.

To wit: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough?” declared Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., an Associate Supreme Court Justice at the time, buttressing a majority argument harnessing the power of U.S. law as a legal means of purifying the race.  When euthanasia failed to win over American hearts and mind, the Federal Government played the war card again and again. Vietnam: undeclared and therefore unconstitutional--except for that Gulf of Tonkin ******* resolution. Vietnam: a cost-plus eugenics project, if ever there was one, although responsive, of course, to the needs of the Military-Industrial Complex.  ******* Ike: he warned us against Fascism in America. As usual, we ignored the man in charge.

Eugenics? Why didn’t the government just put all the retards on the stand, as John Frankenheimer did in Judgment at Nuremberg, a crafty Maximilian Schell humiliating a feeble-minded Montgomery Clift?  Why not, make everyone face a public tribunal, forcing all of us to testify in court, exposing our many substandard and borderline substandard cerebral deficits?  Why not force everyone to demonstrate just how ******* dumb we are, using some clever intelligence test, something l

Thugs with Pens & Aerosol Cans

Thugs with Pens
Hell-bent; not on cultism
Just airing the other sentiments
That don’t make it to primetime

Thugs with pens
Not poking out eyes
Just venting spleen
Sick of the lies

Thugs with pens
Deserve to be heard
They don’t poison your brain
With stacks of *****

Thugs with pens
And aerosol cans
Can change your mind
In ******* time

Thugs with pens
Can make a dent
They don’t need to insert
Un-readable, un-interesting
Covert small print....

Thugs with pens
Don’t need no script writers
Or advisors nor signatories
Witnesses, nor dodgy men
With gold plated fountain pen nibs
To make amends
Or throw in no hidden clauses
That secretly **** your life blood

Thugs with pens
Don’t aim to pierce your skin
But make their mark
Deeper within

Thugs with pens
And aerosol cans
Completely uncensored
champions of free speech
The establishment want suppressed,
silenced, deleted; terminated.

Thugs with pens
And aerosol cans don’t
Schedule meetings
To fix the minutes
And schedule another meeting
And keep ‘minutes’
As square angled
And unproductive
As formal conversation

Thugs with pens
Aim venomous ink
At headless politicians
That squawks like chickens
Bending over
For the *******
Bank-beefing corporations,
Controlling the masses
With ***** little catchphrases
And mounds of munitions
And illegally enforced restrictions
On your movement and free expression


Honest men
Have nothing to fear
From Thugs with Pens & Aerosol Cans
These “thugs” seek asylum
From countries
Where the law’s
Not bought and bent
Thugs with pens & aerosol cans
Are made to wear monikers and masks

Thugs with pens
Don’t turn on its own
Neighbours and citizens
To perpetuate myths:
A ****** ******* lie…
A thing that never happened!
(That’s for all of you dumb wits
out there
Who believe most of the ****
That’s drip fed
Your sensation addicted minds
Most of the time,)
Time you started reading between the lines

In fact get a pen
Or an aerosol can
Write your own lines
Start broadcasting
Reclaim your space
Before you’re completely neoned
Into the shade
And corralled under the spell
Of a TV screen
Or an anger raising headline
That conducts the flow
Of the status quo

Load up your magazines
With ball point pens
And sharp edged writing nibs,
******* a belt of aerosol cans
Reclaim your right to free expression
In public spaces
Join the rag-tag army
Of intuitive
Self-knowing men

The End: is well begun,
George Orwell
Should never have written
That blueprint,
‘1984’

Pearl Avenue runs past the high-school lot,
Bends with the trolley tracks, and stops, cut off
Before it has a chance to go two blocks,
At Colonel McComsky Plaza. Berth's Garage
Is on the corner facing west, and there,
Most days, you'll find Flick Webb, who helps Berth out.

Flick stands tall among the idiot pumps-
Five on a side, the old bubble-head style,
Their rubber elbows hanging loose and low.
One's nostrils are two S's, and his eyes
An E and O. And one is squat, without
A head at all-more of a football type.

Once Flick played for the high-school team, the Wizards.
He was good: in fact, the best. In '46
He bucketed three hundred ninety points,
A county record still. The ball loved Flick.
I saw him rack up thirty-eight or forty
In one home game. His hands were like wild birds.

He never learned a trade, he just sells gas,
Checks oil, and changes flats. Once in a while,
As a gag, he dribbles an inner tube,
But most of us remember anyway.
His hands are fine and nervous on the lug wrench.
It makes no difference to the lug wrench, though.

Off work, he hangs around Mae's Luncheonette.
Grease-gray and kind of coiled, he plays pinball,
Smokes those thin cigars, nurses lemon phosphates.
Flick seldom says a word to Mae, just nods
Beyond her face toward bright applauding tiers
Of Necco Wafers, Nibs, and Juju Beads.

12 in the dark, I sit awake by the window,
Across from Hyde Park, and the feel of the wind oh,
Sparking a bark, Nana's remarking from below,
Canine matriarch against the boy with no shadow,
Time's flickering by and I begin to rust,
Consumed, I'm high with lust just for pixie dust,
But to fly you must be robust and adjust,
And I can't, though I try, I just look with disgust,
Sitting on the sill, I think of him mournfully,
Hard as I try, I can't think of him scornfully,
Despite the fact that he talks so informally,
He says my name and I know I was born to be,
Part of the family, I think of them nightly,
Tootles, the twins, Curly, Nibs and Slightly,
Second star to the right, it shines so brightly,
Hope he might come back if I ask politely,
He doesn't apologize, he's immature and he's cold,
Lives in a land without rules so he can't be controlled,
But as soon as I saw him I knew I'd struck green-gold,
Peter Pan is a joke that just never gets old,
Don't smile at crocodiles down in Neverland,
And if you hear a ticking clock, hope the ships are manned,
Because there's a high demand for the taste of pirate band,
And if you're not hooked by now then Hook'll tell you first hand,
I flew here like a bird in a night-dress, frilly,
Scared, trying to fight stress, skin like Chantilly,
Found Peter and I confess that the boy's my Achilles,
Now I'm a lost girl treading on Tiger Lillies,
Acorns and thimbles are my idea of 'bases',
And sword fights with pirates are my ***** chasers,
Watching the boys as they fly and admiring Peter Pan,
But he's the boy who can't love here in Neverland,
I wanted devotion, to marry men who were charming,
So I repressed, left my emotion, I left Peter Pan snarling,
My own species no longer, just a common starling,
Caged by age at my window, I'm Wendy Darling.

our bread and butter...
     the web of stars,
     the scatter of moons
     and orbiting planets.
the entire universe
harvested and crammed
into the metre,
of a poetic verse.

our bread and butter...
     harnessing the regal rays of the sun.
     inflating the fluff of quiet clouds.
     drinking up the winds of the weather.
     revering the magic in the flight of birds.
we fill our cups to the brim...
with fantastical dreams
and let spill
over parchment
the cornucopia of idealised words.

our bread and butter...
the incessant peeling and picking
on healing wounds.
of which we have learnt to savour...
     let bleed
     the willing blood...
     feed the seeds
     with impending flood.
nurture to fruition
thoughts stunted in discretion.
bring to light
thoughts hidden in the nether.

our bread and butter...
we dip...
the nibs,
of our word worn feathers.
let them sink,
shallow beneath the surface
to the sanctity of a familiar place.
     *casting our trials,
     and tribulations...
     pent up emotions,
     and what we think
     unto paper
     with the burn of
     everlasting ink.

It's pouring rain and my backpack is full of strawberry kefir.
I think when we decided to take a break,
you took half my brain with you.

Kefir is a delightful crossbreed of Yop and Perrier. Creamy sublingual fireworks. A single tablespoon is sufficient to send a conga line of 5 billion probiotic bacteria boogying through your innards. But like most things I enjoy, I cannot successfully covet in small, measured portions. Which is why I went for the litre in the first place.

I imagine your face as I rinse my strawberry saturated belongings and imagine the microscopic bacterium hoopla happening between my fingers (you would laugh at my conga line comparison, because you are one of the world's only people who knows how much I truly despise conga lines).

Oh God, the water is just diluting the yogurt. It has become the great Sea of Kefir.

You would have the solution to this. When it comes to logic, you manage to beat me every time without ever making me feel intellectually inferior.

But I need to figure these things out for myself.

Luckily my other groceries were sealed in plastic:
-chia seeds
-goji berries
-cacao nibs
-wheatgrass

These were spared.

As you can see, since we have decided to embark on our own paths for a while, I have tried to be "HEALTHY!". The bathroom is a small library of moth-bitten self-help books (Thanks, Mom) and my bedtime is close enough to twilight to high-five the sun on its way down.
I've started to work out again with a little more addiction than conviction or even common sense.
And because you aren't here to regulate me, I've busted my knees (aaaa-gaaaain.)

And all notwithstanding, as I wandered down 13th avenue with my organic Hippie super-loot, feeling very smug and self-possessed in my birkenstocks, I passed by my favourite breakfast joint, and my kale-fertilized stomach was very persuasive: No, I insist.

Proceeded to savour three enormous pancakes that I could have stitched together to form a roomy buckwheat overcoat. Drowned them with a 3pm coffee. I thought nothing of it, but after all we've been through when it comes to food, you would have been so proud of me, babe. When I admit that I've got a broken heart (-darling, I know I broke my own) people are far too kind to me. 110 minutes and three sacks of flour later I float in a sweet gluten haze from my free (and freeing) lunch back to my apartment.

Which is when I discover the Sea of Kefir.

I think I'm trying too hard.

I think, really, the Art of Becoming One Whole Person isn't so much about us becoming the Perfect People we've always wanted to be. That's not why we strapped a hundred helium balloons to our otherwise incredible relationship and tearfully waved as it disappeared over the horizon. I think it's really about just learning how to regulate ourselves.

Here's one Truth: We will never, ever be perfect. And we will never find our perfection in each other. We have to let that go. We have to stop fighting against the invisible standards we create in each other.

But we can get over ourselves enough to be Pretty Great.
Just make peace with the Pretty Great folks we are. Have the 3 pancake- sore knee- kefir backpack afternoons, and still feel Pretty Great.

And when we do, I think our relationship will feel Pretty Great, too.

Because I'd rather be able to remind myself that I'm Pretty Great,
than rely on you to convince me I'm Perfect.

Yikes, there it is.

So that's my homework. It's full of errors, and there are countless agitated holes worn through by pink erasers, self-doubt, and heartache.

But I know, darling- that by the end of this, you'll give me a sticker-

(and by then I wont need it)

I'll put it right next to the one I've given myself.

Portentous enunciation, syllable
To blessed syllable affined, and sound
Bubbling felicity in cantilene,
Prolific and tormenting tenderness
Of music, as it comes to unison,
Forgather and bell boldly Crispin's last
Deduction. Thrum, with a proud douceur
His grand pronunciamento and devise.

The chits came for his jigging, bluet-eyed,
Hands without touch yet touching poignantly,
Leaving no room upon his cloudy knee,
Prophetic joint, for its diviner young.
The return to social nature, once begun,
Anabasis or slump, ascent or chute,
Involved him in midwifery so dense
His cabin counted as phylactery,
Then place of vexing palankeens, then haunt
Of children nibbling at the sugared void,
Infants yet eminently old, then dome
And halidom for the unbraided femes,
Green crammers of the green fruits of the world,
Bidders and biders for its ecstasies,
True daughters both of Crispin and his clay.
All this with many mulctings of the man,
Effective colonizer sharply stopped
In the door-yard by his own capacious bloom.
But that this bloom grown riper, showing nibs
Of its eventual roundness, puerile tints
Of spiced and weathery rouges, should complex
The stopper to indulgent fatalist
Was unforeseen. First Crispin smiled upon
His goldenest demoiselle, inhabitant,
She seemed, of a country of the capuchins,
So delicately blushed, so humbly eyed,
Attentive to a coronal of things
Secret and singular. Second, upon
A second similar counterpart, a maid
Most sisterly to the first, not yet awake
Excepting to the motherly footstep, but
Marvelling sometimes at the shaken sleep.
Then third, a thing still flaxen in the light,
A creeper under jaunty leaves. And fourth,
Mere blusteriness that gewgaws jollified,
All din and gobble, blasphemously pink.
A few years more and the vermeil capuchin
Gave to the cabin, lordlier than it was,
The dulcet omen fit for such a house.
The second sister dallying was shy
To fetch the one full-pinioned one himself
Out of her botches, hot embosomer.
The third one gaping at the orioles
Lettered herself demurely as became
A pearly poetess, peaked for rhapsody.
The fourth, pent now, a digit curious.
Four daughters in a world too intricate
In the beginning, four blithe instruments
Of differing struts, four voices several
In couch, four more personae, intimate
As buffo, yet divers, four mirrors blue
That should be silver, four accustomed seeds
Hinting incredible hues, four self-same lights
That spread chromatics in hilarious dark,
Four questioners and four sure answerers.

Crispin concocted doctrine from the rout.
The world, a turnip once so readily plucked,
Sacked up and carried overseas, daubed out
Of its ancient purple, pruned to the fertile main,
And sown again by the stiffest realist,
Came reproduced in purple, family font,
The same insoluble lump. The fatalist
Stepped in and dropped the chuckling down his craw,
Without grace or grumble. Score this anecdote
Invented for its pith, not doctrinal
In form though in design, as Crispin willed,
Disguised pronunciamento, summary,
Autumn's compendium, strident in itself
But muted, mused, and perfectly revolved
In those portentous accents, syllables,
And sounds of music coming to accord
Upon his law, like their inherent sphere,
Seraphic proclamations of the pure
Delivered with a deluging onwardness.
Or if the music sticks, if the anecdote
Is false, if Crispin is a profitless
Philosopher, beginning with green brag,
Concluding fadedly, if as a man
Prone to distemper he abates in taste,
Fickle and fumbling, variable, obscure,
Glozing his life with after-shining flicks,
Illuminating, from a fancy gorged
By apparition, plain and common things,
Sequestering the fluster from the year,
Making gulped potions from obstreperous drops,
And so distorting, proving what he proves
Is nothing, what can all this matter since
The relation comes, benignly, to its end?

So may the relation of each man be clipped.

I held you gently when you were most fragile.
You solid cloud.
Borrowing your calcium shell from
The turtle who flew.
Sitting among the twigs and
Thorns you made your throne.

I held you gently when you were awakened.
You precocial chick.
Watching your pinions grow
Into deadly nibs.
Seeing you filled with
Self-defined joie de vivre.

I held you gently when you were set to be free.
You helium ball.
Soaring to your motherland where
You are meant to be.
Looking at all the faces and
These radiant faces reciprocate you.

I held you gently when you were shot.
You bloodied phoenix.
Burning peacefully with all the might
You could possibly muster.
Embracing your demise with
Nothing more than an expectant smile.

I held you gently when I was most fragile.
Yet I know your short life had been worthwhile.

You leave the apostrophes to someone else, I can't even make it in to 'im', instead I'm writing papers about the Oneida and Jonestown murders.
The television is on, the air purifier
is dying. I can hear the ***** fan belt of my laptop on the fritz or the fizzy bubbles of
The Cranberry Redbull that I'm trying.
I could be a great sport. Ya know, anything you want.

Jump to.

Make the Miso soup, clear off the kitchen table, buy brand new markers with no recent pictures drawn into their nibs.
Throw in comfy pants. I don't know what else I have to offer, a clean bath? Some books? A magazine?

The weather is exciting, we could call get Pneumonia or at least share a drink and catch Hep-C,
Put our children together to catch the gift of Shingles. A motorcycle toy for my Uritis it is better. The roses from the sweater paired with leather, leggings, and a kick *** song. Inside we can talk about his hair cut and going to California. I'm intimidated by you moreover when you tell me you can eat airplanes with only your bare hands. And even if I'm a bore, I still have Streptococcus. So seal and deliver. My cerulean goddess, with the best, thank  thank you for the nightmare fever you stole from the words I wrote.  And at the end of your book you don't have to cop out and fall along a crippled sky. With crippled words, verbs, and losers. Score cards of different colors. Tunics proud as the walk to the river we voted from Baptism to demon-voter. Stand and deliver, flora and fauna that threatens to eat our home.

Laden down with baggage,a
suitcase full of books and
Mr Babbage,
sits tight in a polished metal box with an
outlook looking in on everything he ever sees.

A glimmering of light slides in and
fades into the station
where I'm waiting for the train to come
but hope is not salvation and if
this is the new nativity
there's someone here where I should be
and I am not alone.

There's a porter,Mr Porter,
he's kind of short but he is smiling
and the light becomes much stronger
as he nears the place I'm waiting
but I've waited many times and seen
the crossings of too many lines
which blur in shiny steely strands,to
stretch out tiny golden hands which hold me
in this place.

I am a face unknown, a man outgrown
and hope is not salvation
this station is a metaphor
I don't know why I'm waiting, maybe
for the light to further me in
some sweet education
where the teaching of Apocrypha
is opened up,
please let that be.

Morning shakes me wide awake and
I become one more earthquake among
the many tremors and
the trembling in the temples,
I shall ride the storms
and surf the clouds which shroud my
Earth in mystery,
until
the truth arrives.

Broken Needles and rusted gates,
Treading over thorns and crushing glass in an apathetic state.
At best toss the thrown rock will crash,
Not without aggravating a storm of Asbestos.

Iron-lacking in socially acceptable art etiquette.
Climbing neglected buildings.
One hand gripping a rusted ladder,
The other, spray paint wielding.

Battling for space between the wall and the vine.
First time I don't feel misplaced, struggling for lines.
My minds at ease, I have everything I need.
A place to sit and think,

A place where the space is occupied by two high school kids.
Lighting candles that have merged
With the unstable rotting wood of the table.
Scratching their heart's words through bleeding pen nibs.

Loose leaf pages scatter the ground,
Not worthy of residency in my note book.
Reunited with the fallen leaves.
Reconciliation with my mind hook or by crook.

is there any such thing
as too much ink
too many pens
more paper
than the human heart can fill?

the heart does nothing
but pump the blood that is necessary
to fill my fingers
to move
to scrawl too much ink
with too many pens
on more paper
than such a treacherous ***** deserves.

but the heart will get its ink
if it has to bleed dry in order to fill
the pens that it thinks it should have
to defile more paper
than any forest should have to give.

the heart will have what it wants
forests
nibs
and veins
be ******

Eyes are blue gleaming diamonds,
words concealing gold dust
are sealed between the lips
that avidly taste thunder,
expression of my hidden hunger.
Hands bind me closer til
rib cages say "No more"
Like nibs, nails on my back
write ****** verses direct,
forcing one to spread eagle
as the orchestration moves to crescendo
itinerant eyes emit sizzling light,
the cloud that engulfs , caresses every inch,
a bamboo grove in wind
dances whispering love, in many tunes,
tells one to lie under it's canopy, I submit,
hear my songs from a secret center,
eyes speak the lingo of  love, light spills
heart beats against heart, in mad frenzy,
we need no words any more.

I burnt my tongue a week ago--
Too much of scalding coffee and lies [on your part],
But I swallowed it with a couple of anti-depressants
I have forgotten how creamy, toffee powdered mocha tastes like and your lips,
They used to taste like macchiato, as time passed by,
                                                                ­         Maple leaves drizzled autumn, burst into slashing icy winter,
Your lips started tasting like black coffee, like tar, most of the days it’s only a figure of speech,
Warning sign blinking all day long in my head, when I can’t hold it in my fingers,
When it’s escaping out of my grasp, ready to run, making space for the sugary vanilla layer
But then there are days, when you find your way back underneath my sheets,
My duvet, the only witness, sadly silent all too similar to my will power screaming inside my head,
And here are you fictious sentences, framed with such precise,
Knocking down all the walls I tried to built, leading to defeat,
                                                                ­                     Holding me chained like a slave.
All my fury fueled sentences burn like fire, vengeful riff of an electric guitar within my mind,
When your fingers encircle me, rough nibs of your lips on the nape of neck, palm tracing lies on my tailbone
All the fire drowns in crafted lies, ashes of my dignity scattered, a bleak watered down-
                                                           ­                    Note of a single string as the soundtrack of my misery.
I burnt my tongue last night--
Too much of your blazing skin and lies but I spitted it all out,
This brittle heart not so brittle anymore heated at 1,300*c, on the kiln again and again-
                                                          ­                                                   To form an everlasting nature.
Arteries have clotted, hatred burning bright within, lungs suffocating starving for oxygen and blood,
Like the dragon breathes fire, I’ll breathe out the scathing curses; and leave with my dignity intact
Barely responding to all your shameless deeds.

Undercoverism, teenage soot inside of dry and crusty eyes. When the morning begs alarms to die, and she brings that familiar rain again. Some one that unknowns us, sheds a brutal light. Where the hole inside each child's head, may be disarmed across a deck of cards. In an anti-climactic exposition, where aces climb the sleeves, young Caucasian children find themselves in minorities.

Bubbling voodoo-hoodoo, soda water succumbing the Oro-Quincy spillway until the men have wept and every other woman gleans her brow. When we wake up in the poppy garden, when we've fallen asleep to one hundred cowardly clowns lifting themselves off the heap of a Volkswagen Rabbit. On Broadway heading to 14th Street, avoiding the sidewalk cracks via a jog through alphabet town. There are self-righteous no-ones, famous, auto-inflicted vicious inextricably ordinary and sub-par, barely scratching at their own averages, and hardly shaking words out of their id-sized corner offices at Avenue B & St. Marks.

By the shivering hands can tell, of which lowly smoking dactyls accentuate their currish farce, and amidst a stack of newsprint and cardboard, boxes and the bothersome, the most personal stranger no person should ever greet. Nor mahogany or oak manifold shall ever be select, and the hollowing sheath- Earth in her brilliant hues of green should forever keep unbeknownst to any selves heeding their milky skies' retreat.  

The oder fresh, from digits bending, collapses on the archway round the bed. Its hardened crime, it fails in pretending, like a lust in a sand plume, an eight-shaped glass ornament, arenosely erupting in a drizzling circumstance. We call it time.

It is a noise that summer caught on to, a broken heel, running up ways and ways to concrete squares, like California was only just pretending.

Goodness knows. Godness never around us. Healing can't be done, no book or prose can satisfy her, inasmuch as she belonged, creeping up eyes leapt to their suspension. Nibs erode into the conchoidal zone, some pressure to the ilia fossa. Some work furnishes settlers to the hips, cool wool and linen make an aperture of threading. Dreaming when the moon begins to permeate a looming glow, in an arc during achronychal silvery mists, withering beneath this flume of fancy.

Some of the wet cuts a hole-mess into  us. Wethered nymphs introduce the suffix of their succubus, is this the surreality the ethereal vapors make for our nexus. Beasts in a bold way, crimsony gore-dom, comes dominating greens to overgrow in this show.

Water soaks into the empty breath of words wrapping up tonight's syphon. Some hours of the past inside an alarm's sound torture. Hidden by inches, filling up the glass, every minute, every poppy, all the numbers seemed to help her.

Covers that fixe anew such random sleep, brings the devilish horror to pervert absent beeps. Until  the dots begin to close on us, and in slumber we rotate the words to assemble an acute understanding of being sorry for  sleep that will always continue to be out of reach.

after years of fending Mathematics,
hiding disastrous test papers as guerrilla tactics,  

lolling in the shame of discovery,  
followed by parents' sherlockian commentary,
how they came upon the dreaded documents, accidentally,  

I thank the gods who gave writers nibs, quills, ink,  
how their tales became shields,infused life in print,

these angelic saviours from Darth Vader menace,
famed rescuers from teacher disguised fiends,
dear, beloved school education, I forgive you all your sins...

TOBY WHICH IS IM
SENDS LOCAL CATS IN A SPIN
ES GENTLEMAN JIM
c marie forte 2017





SPELLBINDING SAGE EYES
EVANESCENT TURQUOISE SKIES
REFLECTIVE AND WISE

After a sudden migration
paint thick brushes hid
and pen lids leapt on nibs,
the sodden hydration
dry as dust.

A Gossamer, glistening in the glen,
Tulips in bloom,
Thrushed, blushing red.
Two lips crushed together,
A stolen breath.

Tick,
Tick,
Tick,

The hours, they pass, lovers leap in
two
each others arms

Spaghetti legs and arms,
the nub smell of rub and sheet,
the twine nibs imprint,
a palmer's press.

Give me a kiss, breath,
You escape me, but just.
I cannot escape. I give up.
I cannot escape your lovers lap.
Dippled cheeks, and that,
Smile, laugh.

Your mind is a killer. It's a net of whittle and wit
You laugh because I am an easy lay, I have no complexions, no way
out.
You laugh because I am so strut forward, and you know, you play.
You play, pull touch push. And laugh.
And when I want to say nay, go away and sulk you pull me to your chest,
and **** into me like a full house on a sunny day.

as if frayed brushes,
broken pen nibs,
emptied paint tubes
and ***** of crumpled paper
laying haphazardly on the floor
wasn't enough to show
the lack of love
in our hearts.

we pass by each other
like ghostly strangers
with a vague notion of
familiarity.
we sleep on the same bed,
but we're not sleeping together.
we eat at the same table,
but we're not eating together.

but some nights,
i hear you let out a quiet sob
just as i turn the corner
and you don't know it,
but i've seen the tear marks
on your cheeks when you
silently crawl into bed.

Heaps of her across the deserted plains, oily fingers reaching up and over the horizon until all of the numbers fill her pockets, her father worried, and her muses covered with goat-head's thorn. Where does she start to fuse her needs with the weapons in their suburban corolla of lilacs and wanton redolence? It's the opacity in her finger nibs and the dozens of names she felt closing over her legs sideways, until she awakens in the night to take the blood dripping cotton tissues off of her face, off of her bed-side dresser table. She can't even paw forward or undress her wetness in haiku. Everyone she knows doesn't know her. Everything she's seen, doesn't seem to be there for her anymore. That's the trade they told her to barter for, the golden seals and vitamin needs she's gobbling up by the palmful every morning by seven.

Seven for the circus or the mimes, seven for the cloves hanging from the door and seven for the queries that strike back her abcesses and cost her seven by the quart and seven for the plastics. Seven dancing backwards towards a rook or a *****, seven inside her chest playing guitar with David Bowie, seven at the doggerel, and seven for the stitch and the obtuse- only a creature of seven might go for her, in a spot of doves, crank, and soda it is poison, seven is her ***** line, her sexuality, her sinfulness, and her latitude over and over again. Seven makes her want for tomorrow, seven takes tomorrow and throws itself up against the wall, pledging a game in the summer, seven to a trip of caramel and dukes, seven for the prince and the painting of the two of them, seven for the winter, and for the shadows that stretch curiosity past the breath of a summons', seven for the day and seven for the evening, seven scratches her ears and pulls out her hair, seven is the ring and the blue phantom buried somewhere far, far away, green is what's left, but seven knows which way the rain comes and who is going to follow it through.

There is a numbness that radiates on the fringe, a tickly discomfort not even a narrator could let out or down to a name on the mountains near the **** plateau that conquers her nuance, and shakes the both of them to core of the fight. This is not a flag that costs us in coins or in dollars. This is the worry chiseling our shapes and our buttery hips, a stacked set of crazy in a photograph off the leash of only a few. And it calls them to the night when it's only three of us left, until every cord is untied, until every verb is set in its caste, or ringing out to the tremolos of rapture, and the musicianship of pepper-jacked sneezes in the ambers and umbers that although startling, we've all learned to convert our averages in order to swing under the storm, and baby each of us with an elixir of myriad captures, images, and violent abuse.

While the words can yield, and the festivities can hoard each of the simple new experiences against travels of women, and pictures from Mussorgsky riling up soft drinks and evocations towards the center where all of us sometimes will let ourselves, let loose. Something horrendous and cold plugging into the sugars, something quiet, nearly a friend of reminders, crustaceans and ocean making this top-down beach of faces for all to shake and roll with or set forward a cacophony of abuse. Until in a breath she calls for the infinite intuition sheltering her and our window from the pain of misuse.

That is the photograph where we have been looking to live, here is the memory we spent our minds trying desperately to relive in the shade and in the snafu, against the bark and the piano keys treating our rise. Within our skin and our pupils, our silver bookends and/or the mammals we don't use names for but for whom we've been introduced to.

Nyctophilia

Undercoverism, teenage soot inside of dry and crusty eyes. When the morning begs alarms to die, and she brings that familiar rain again. Some one that unknowns us, sheds a brutal light. Where the hole inside each child's head, may be disarmed across a deck of cards. In an anti-climactic exposition, where aces climb the sleeves, young Caucasian children find themselves in minorities.

Bubbling voodoo-hoodoo, soda water succumbing the Oro-Quincy spillway until the men have wept and every other woman gleans her brow. When we wake up in the poppy garden, when we've fallen asleep to one hundred cowardly clowns lifting themselves off the heap of a Volkswagen Rabbit. On Broadway heading to 14th Street, avoiding the sidewalk cracks via a jog through alphabet town. There are self-righteous no-ones, famous, auto-inflicted vicious inextricably ordinary and sub-par, barely scratching at their own averages, and hardly shaking words out of their id-sized corner offices at Avenue B & St. Marks.

By the shivering hands can tell, of which lowly smoking dactyls accentuate their currish farce, and amidst a stack of newsprint and cardboard, boxes and the bothersome, the most personal stranger no person should ever greet. Nor mahogany or oak manifold shall ever be select, and the hollowing sheath- Earth in her brilliant hues of green should forever keep unbeknownst to any selves heeding their milky skies' retreat.  

The oder fresh, from digits bending, collapses on the archway round the bed. Its hardened crime, it fails in pretending, like a lust in a sand plume, an eight-shaped glass ornament, arenosely erupting in a drizzling circumstance. We call it time.

It is a noise that summer caught on to, a broken heel, running up ways and ways to concrete squares, like California was only just pretending.

Goodness knows. Godness never around us. Healing can't be done, no book or prose can satisfy her, inasmuch as she belonged, creeping up eyes leapt to their suspension. Nibs erode into the conchoidal zone, some pressure to the ilia fossa. Some work furnishes settlers to the hips, cool wool and linen make an aperture of threading. Dreaming when the moon begins to permeate a looming glow, in an arc during achronychal silvery mists, withering beneath this flume of fancy.

Some of the wet cuts a hole-mess into  us. Wethered nymphs introduce the suffix of their succubus, is this the surreality the ethereal vapors make for our nexus. Beasts in a bold way, crimsony gore-dom, comes dominating greens to overgrow in this show.

Water soaks into the empty breath of words wrapping up tonight's syphon. Some hours of the past inside an alarm's sound torture. Hidden by inches, filling up the glass, every minute, every poppy, all the numbers seemed to help her.

Covers that fixe anew such random sleep, brings the devilish horror to pervert absent beeps. Until  the dots begin to close on us, and in slumber we rotate the words to assemble an acute understanding of being sorry for  sleep that will always continue to be out of reach.

This blank page haunts me
Daring me to fill up the lines
Defining words
To try describing the universe
Transcribing between the lines
A little tool too often used
Softer than a whisper
Sharper than a sword

Blasted manifestos
Speeches lapped up by leeches
Letters of love
Declarations of hate
Signatures for war
Who am I to dictate?
From the scrawls on my little page

But present still is “what if”—
When script fails
What is left?
Nothing but smudges
Faint remnants of faded pasts
Moving to fill blank spaces
Nibs dancing across white pages

People have asked me how I feel. It’s not simple sadness - it’s far less real- but more a resigned sense of loss. I guess… I guess I’d say it’s like when your shoelaces come untied and you look down at them, you see the laces laying listlessly on the ground, but you don’t reach down, you don’t twist them back into a knot and rescue them from the dirt. It’s not that you don’t want to, it’s simply that something is lacking - the energy, the motivation, the care. And so you keep walking, and with every step you take, you see those laces snake around your feet. They tangle with each other, trampled by your shoes, but you don’t care. You don’t have the energy to lose. Instead, you let them drag in the dirt, in the wet, in the dust. You let them because you just don’t care. After all, it’s not as if your shoes have fallen off; the laces are still doing their job, just not as efficiently. They’ve been compromised; they’re acting differently. And that’s fine. But the worst is when people look at you, look down and say to you, “Oh, your shoe laces are untied,” realizing it anew. As if you’re not aware with every step you take that those tiny plastic nibs at the ends of a fraying string are slapping against the floor, raking across the ground. As if you can’t feel the looseness in your shoes, the vulnerability, and the sense that they no longer feel quite as snug and might fall off at the slightest tug. As if you can’t look down and see them dragging, twisting like snakes trailing  in your wake. Yes, you know your shoe laces are untied. It doesn’t matter what you’ve told yourself, it doesn’t matter if you’ve lied. You know. You know, but you’re not going to do anything about it because why? Why bother? You’ll have to untie them eventually; you saw it coming, that inevitability. Everything must break. Everything must come apart, every shoelace, every person, every work of art. Nothing can stay together in the long run. We might as well let it come undone.

There must have been seven chimneys
In the great house on the hill,
I never actually counted them
While the house was standing still,
But the years had brought their own neglect
And the house was well run down,
By the time we pulled the place apart
For a new estate in town.

We couldn’t just use a wrecking ball
It was too immense for that,
When we took it brick by brick apart
We could build a hundred flats.
The chimneys were the hardest part
For the flues had twists and turns
As they rose up through three storeys with
Each hearth, soot black and burned.

It had been the home of Dukes and Earls
Back in Victoria’s day,
With gardeners, cooks and pantry maids,
All with a place to stay,
There were ***** and more for the gentlefolk
For the vicar and local squire,
And after the garden parties they would
Huddle, in front of the fire.

We chipped away at the chimney stacks
And gradually brought them down,
Brick by brick to the local tip
As red dust covered the ground,
But then a guy gave a sudden cry
During a working lull,
‘I think I see, what it seems to me,
The top of a human skull.’

The top of a human skull it was
Of a child, no more than six,
Jammed up tight in the chimney there
Imprisoned by old red bricks,
We managed to pry him loose at last
And lifted him from the flue,
But then the horror came home to us
For his legs were missing, too.

We saw the mangling hook they’d used
That lodged in one of his ribs,
That tore the body apart to clear
The chimney, for His Nibs,
The kid was lodged in a twisting flue
They knew that his case was dire,
And tried to make him climb up and through
By lighting a smoking fire.

We couldn’t tell if the sweep was dead
Or simply allowed to choke,
When someone ordered the fire lit
And sent up a cloud of smoke,
Perhaps he screamed as the smoke had streamed
And the fire burned, but slow,
He was just a sweep, his life was cheap
Compared to the guests below.

The little lad’s in the cemetery
He was laid with special care,
With everyone but nobility
Gathered to lay him there,
It’s a page at last from a cruel past
That we turned, but won’t forget,
Great wealth destroys our humanity,
Have we learned that lesson yet?

David Lewis Paget

the pile of books on my windowsill sits gathering dust
the pencils are swords instead of daggers
all the pen nibs are dry
the embers slowly starving
the smiles succumbing to gravity
and the grit's nothing but dust
if time is money
then we're in debt

we did feed, on pine cone nibs
wild onion and garlic under a lonesome willow tree,
we fed good on unconditional love,
woke up with sun listening to doves
and Mulberry trees grew all over us a ruby
red berry fed us  then
in an unconditional like love
ourselves giving  in to the shade
the dream of a willow tree providing us
magnificents cool on a hot day,
breezes wound us up and deposited us like
dust
on a fertile field,
wrapped around nature wrapped around
each other
then.

Mentally, with transfixed exuberance
I beget unto my fingers something so entrancing, that as if to steady a tongue-thwapping aweness- it plays to me, like a unicorn song. Heavy-like. Sweeping hands over with stranger’s voices, mixing the toiling mischief misunderstood. Then stains each column of its melody in waves impervious to this language. With nexility, the nibs and thimbles jettison into the blissful rains of beading color, where only such human momentum cascades before its subtle ends.

Dear Jesus
you should have been a footballer
and played for Sampdoria
the spectators would have adored you
and you could have been a big star.

ps. If heaven is like Disneyworld,
book me a spot.

Bad Poetry...
It's a nasty habit
Its ***** and filthy
Words crawling under
  your skin like roaches
   scavenging in the night
Ink splatters into the Illusion
  of sanity and clarity on the pages
    of chaos and confusion
We all think we know what we're
  doing we all think we're in control
Clicking our pens, dipping our nibs
  in ink, scratching out letters to form
   thoughts to describe dreams to take us
     away
Away to our secret little corners
Our coffee shops, our street side cafés
Hiding in plain sight
Being nasty and ***** and filthy
Just waiting to feel our habit start to
  crawl in and out and all over
So we can write some more
   bad poetry

Written down in black and white and so we
think that what is wrote is right.
As if the pen had honesty to call its own and
the scribe had no agenda.
How tender is the mind, which believes the written word is kind,
a mind I'd like to think was some bridge between myself and some ancestral link,
alas
this can't be so,
because I know the cruelty of words
and fools with nibs instead of teeth who bite with ink
and bring the bitten grief.

I write,erase and write and struggle through
the maze of right and wrong.
I shall and do intend to carry on
until the writing disappears or
until my fears are overcome.

On an overcrowded street,
where bright and darkness never meet,
where voices barter to be heard
from faces hidden behind veil or beard.

Aromas, perfumes, pungent smells,
wafting forth from wishing wells,
coffee roosters wake up the souls,
Bazaars of ochre in sun drenched bowls.

Minarets with nibs of lead
scribe crescent moons on skies near red,
Seraglio Point, which marks the Horn,
where Marmara is Bosphorus born.

The sky blue mosque mocks Mecca's name
but leaves no doubt to which bears fame.
Constantinople or Istanbul,
no place, no name, can be so full.

On one goes, by cheek, by jowl,
eclipsed by fading light in cowl.
No talk of morn, no night yet come,
no curfew called, nor quiet but hum.

Of dreams Aladdin's, of wicks, of lamps,
of sesame, pariahs, tramps.
Of sounds from far off citadels,
of glamour, clamour, peal knell-toll bells.

No sleep, no sheep, no counting herds,
no mudlark talk, no listening nerds.
Romans, Greeks, have gone and come,
left names on stones; Byzantium.

Where west joins east, nigh one the least,
by bridge shake hands, an eyeful feast.
The spawn of dawn, once far, now here,
a call to all, to kneel in prayer.

Buddha’s at the bar
Skulling pints and starting fights
And causing war.

Gone too far.

His life isn’t real
It’s just a dream
Of those in need
Like you and me.

We’ve gone too far.

Sonar stones are thrown
Across a street
And running feet
Are running Home.

Homeless Bones.

Kids are telling fibs
About his nibs in No.3
Who never sleeps and lives alone.

Home alone.

Buddha’s makin’ sense
About the tense unhappy men
Who drink in bars
And write on walls and smokes cigars.

But we haven’t time
To clean and shine.
So up we get
And dodge our debts
And place our bets
And close our eyes.
All will be fine...
Hope it’s fine.

your skin. the tapestry of your body. that guiding force between us, the forces. Our interdigitated hands, our sudorous hands, our midnight hands, and the hands of the hallway. Our amatory tryst, left palm on your cheek, right palm on your cheek- my lips wrapped around your forehead, coming up to the top of your hair-line. Deep, dark brown hair, thick locks of brunette strands. Yesterday, the perfervid and igneous morning hours spent drinking from your hot caldera. And I kowtowed my forehead against your pale soft skin, kissing circles around your naval, and reaching with extreme delicacy the nibs of my fingers up the sides of your rib cage, carefully avoiding your *******. When I came to your shoulders, I filled my hands with them and pulled us closer towards each other. I turned my head to face you and you strained to raise your head from the bed, your supine state, our sprawled bodies turned to neatly intertwine our appendages, to make a ball of skins. You reached forward to hold my cheeks in your hands, and bring the edges of your hands alongside the inches of my ears to bring me down on top of your lips, where you pursed them and sang to me, softly, your voice barely above a whisper, talking into my ear.