perpetual expeditions amidst this hazy twilight,
periwinkled vistas ensnaring me in

buzzzzzzzzzzzz
the sound penetrates my ear drum

black and yellow rabble-rouser
this rambunctious little menace

a pomegranate
eternally ripe, giving me life

gilled, scaled, underwater creature
emerging from the deep, boundless rift

two tantalizing tigers
troublesome, treacherous

and she laid there—
undisturbed, unaware

jabbed in her side by a M1903 Springfield
soothed state rattled, shattered

wincing from the poke of the blunt end of the gun
the sleeping lady slept no more

poor fellows,
how were they supposed to hold on to it without opposable thumbs?
  
the distressed damsel appeared grotesque,
flailing and fidgeting at the sight of her surroundings

surface rocking beneath my feat,
my trusty elephant’s weak ankles shattering my already shattered stability

i had no more time for such nonsenses
buzzing sounds burned deep into my psyche

the soft-spoken horizon called out to me
calling for me to continue on into the enigmatic expanse

"The question should not be in what ways writing and utterance trope each other, but how both are involved with number. Without relating the technology of writing to number (as opposed to sound or drawing), it is impossible to discuss it meaningfully as an aspect of versecraft."

          Courage to write and courage to not write. Read
          The great poets and highly accomplished letters
          Of leaders. Yet the war and the book have lives
          Of their own. Vacuum house, analyze mankind.
          His idea of himself. Ideas subsumed by
          Better ones unite people in melting pots.
          I watch from my little bowl of nuts. Watch
          The one red squirrel and the many gray.
          Watch the nuthatch pair, platoon of chickadees.
          Here is what I say: When we can go
          From planet to planet on nothing but air,
          Leaving behind a drop of water,
          No burger bags blowin’ in the sun,
          I’ll love my sons, and my dogs will be happy.

"What is needed is a way to pry apart the polar, mimetic fiction that undergirds discussions (even sympathetic ones) of writing and versification, and see how we can relate writing to measure. Roy Harris’ investigations into the origin of writing make this connection possible."

          Electronic millennium. A long silence
          Wouldn’t hurt. Not that the national debate
          Should cease, it should proceed, passionate
          And furious. Those who have studied the matter
          And have something to say should write cogent
          Opinion pieces on the totalitarian
          Tendencies of minaret Islamists,
          The terminal contradiction of advancing
          Democracy with the unitary military.
          George Washington would not have approved
          And even Lincoln vacillated between
          The practicalities of preserving union
          And the ideal of freeing slaves. The president
          Carries his burden of matter, the physics
          Of existence cannot change our aloneness
          Or the butterfly’s importance, the very
          Last insects at the screens of August.
          It is life we face and death we meet.

"He argues that the origin of writing did not lie in the drawing of figures, or attempts to imitate speech, but in the recording of number. According to Harris, the oldest ‘writing’ that we have, like that on the 11, 000-year-old Ishango bone, is in ‘lines.’ The surface is scored with rows of short, parallel strokes, which probably served a numerical function. We still use such scoring systems today on occasion."

          OK, different strokes. But reading North’s poems
          And his predecessors’ in which noun and verb
          Are so far separated by modifiers,
          Post-positioned prepositions, diversions
          Into ditches, gardens, heavens, I don’t know
          What to do laugh or put the book down and eat
          Several cookies. In other words, anything goes,
          There truth resides. 1/3 life in suburbs,
          1/3 on the subway, and the last third
          On the mountain. A fourth hallucinating
          In heaven. That’s how it goes. You get what you believe.
          Bones in mud. It’s always possible I suppose
          That for nine months analogous or symmetrical
          With gestation our souls wander call it limbo,
          Doing the limbo and harassing the living
          With unanswerable questions, finally accepting
          Free molecular rent in a cubic meter
          Of interstellar space, a rose hip.
         
"Harris speculates about counting by scoring:"
'What is relevant for our present purposes is the fact that counting is associated in many cultures with primitive forms of recording which have a graphically isomorphic basis... The iconic origin of such recording systems is hardly open to doubt: the notch or stroke corresponds to the human finger...'

          Partridgeberry, mugwort, mats of raspberry,
          Cranberry, bearberry, autumn eleagnus,
          Autumn Nocturne, Autumn Leaves, the changes
          To the tunes and the scientific names.
          When it doesn’t matter what you do
          You’re probably doing something new.
          That’s a woodpecker. That’s a moth. I’m bounded
          By my surroundings, I feel at home.
          Could be Schenectady. Could be Troy.
          One of many small cities in which to
          Await my anonymity. Be specific.
          Not asphalt but impermeable surface.
          Not trees but mature stems. Quercus rubrus—
          Quality veneer. Into such a garden
          Have a victor and a fool penetrated.

'In short, the rows of strokes are graphically isomorphic with just that subpart of the recorder’s oral language which comprises the corresponding words used for counting. It makes no difference whether we ‘read’ the sign pictorially as standing for so many fingers held up, or scriptorially as standing for a certain numeral.'

          In a crowded world every action results
          In an equal and overwrought reaction.
          Yet, all the energy recycles
          And there is not one thermal unit more or less
          When all is said and won. Even when the tribes
          Were isolated behind mountain ranges
          And rushing rivers, they sought each other out
          For trading and for taking. Humanity
          Is lonely. Humor is the only remedy
          And going to your daily discipline
          The only way past Monday. Join the torrential
          Flow of words, emotion, wit and erudition.
          It is embarrassing to see a good writer
          Work himself into a lather, having
          Something to say. A system of beliefs
          To illustrate, characters dressed accordingly.
          Gardens and wilderness in which to wander.
          A cave with a view. The plumbing problem never
          Resolves. But we will do what we can and
          Some things we shouldn't because that is human.

"Along with other evidence, this leads him to argue that the invention of writing–or the division of writing and drawing into separate functions–occurred when the graphic representation of number shifted from the token-iterative system that appears on the Ishango bone, to type-slotting."

          Electricity is occult enough for me.
          Excessive classifying could be fascist!
          Yet how else can one organize people
          Into contexts. By their associations.
          Family, work, habits, each assigned
          A day of the week, moon of the month.
          Poets rhyme, jazz musicians count time.
          There is more than one way to make war. By
          Declaration, by punishing offenses
          Against the law of nations, by granting letters
          Of mark and reprisal, by making rules
          Concerning captures on land and water, by
          Suppressing insurrections and repelling invasions,
          Erecting forts, magazines, arsenals,
          Dock yards and other needful buildings. Today
          I face the blank page between the finished pages.

"Harris gives the following example of what he means:"
'The progression from recording sixty sheep by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by sixty strokes to recording the same information by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by a second sign indicating ‘sixty’ is a progression which has already crossed the boundary between pictorial and scriptorial signs.'

          When my grandmother considered it favorable
          That I would be a writer, she had in mind
          Clear commentary from which many people
          Would derive meaning. No such luck. My writings
          Are like the flicking tail of that flycatcher,
          And I am the flycatcher, weighing but an ounce.
          My grandfather’s rough-hewn peasant chairs
          Are well known by my sons though they never knew him
          And the chairs were not hewn, just owned by him.
          One is in a corner of the room and two
          Are scrimmaged around a computer screen.
          Computers post-date him and cars post-date
          His father and so on. If the grid collapses,
          The crops fail and the roads close, some will be forced
          Across boundaries among boulders, naming snakes
          And stars according to memory.
          They will be hungry, mortal and strong.

'A token-iterative sign-system is in effect equivalent to a verbal sublanguage which is restricted to messages of the form ‘sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep...’, or ‘sheep, another, another, another...’, whereas an emblem-slotting system is equivalent to a sublanguage which can handle messages of the form ‘sheep, sixty’.Token-iterative lists are, in principle, lists as long as the number of individual items recorded. With a slot list, on the other hand, we get no information simply by counting the number of marks it contains.'
"When this change occurred it opened ‘a gap between the pictorial and scriptorial function of the emblematic sign’, which had been previously inseparable in the counting represented by rows of slashes."

          No book I know tells if blue cohosh
          Caulophyllum thalictroides—a barberry—
          Is edible. Other barberries are
          But that blue berry looks risky to me.
          And May-apple—Podophyllum—other
          Than the fruit itself which is definitely
          Sweet. So I read, not sure of myself.
          There is a patience with which to wait out anger,
          And a patience with which to endure ignorance.
          The job is everything. It is freedom
          And purpose and religion. It is acceptance
          And shelter and sustenance. Last night
          We were watching Tweet’s show: groveling before
          The rich pharisee’s judgements. I said no
          Amount of money could make me grovel
          Before that guy. His toupe’s gayer than his lisp.
          But who am I? You think bullets won’t ****?
          I’m the guy they put before a wall and shoot
          Then eat lunch. But that feeling passed quickly.

"This semiological gap, made writing possible because it meant that signs could be manipulated to ‘slot’, or identify, anything whatsoever. The open-ended quality of the scriptorial sign was a necessary precondition for the development of writing systems."

          Lately I’ve been copying wholesale
          From the great poems, lines and ideas not my own
          Or owned by all? It’s ok, I can be ignored
          Or appreciated in a future city,
          By a future shore. The honest man can
          Only recognize what he loves and point to it.
          That Borges poem called In Praise of Darkness.
          Emerson and snow. A meditation
          That bumps serenely, with acceptance,
          Between things and thoughts. It is said one should
          Know for whom, to whom one is writing.
          These are letters to those who love letter writing.

"As Harris points out, no writing system is accurately phonetic. Even the alphabet only highlights certain phenomena in the speech stream. The reason for this is that alphabetic writing did not begin as a simpler or more accurate way to record speech than other writing systems, but as an easier way to write."

          A possible cancer had taken me
          To the edge of my endurance. Pokeweed,
          Poisonous, became attractive. Red stems
          And juicy black berries. I had packed warm clothes
          And pain killers. Why the warm clothes if this
          Was to be my last walk? To die in comfort
          Without a fly’s buzz. Overlooking a ravine,
          Sea of mountains, dawn. But it proved a false alarm.
          Now Sunday will be a holy day of plant
          Identification. Nothing better
          Than lying in leaf litter, skin drying
          To a taut drum. Ravens stay away!
          Until cougar’s had his fill! Instead
          I showed the boys pokeweed growing among blackberries
          And taught them the differences and uses.

"Through a radical reduction in the number of signs, the alphabet simplified the scriptorial system in and of itself. The evolution of writing therefore may look like this: simple forms of counting preceded the complications of pictorial representation, which in turn led to simplification of the writing system in cultures that adopted the alphabet."

          I was running uphill, parallel to
          The Taconics extending northward into
          Vermont (I find Vermonters in their jalopies
          Annoying but admire them for planning
          To arrest the president for war crimes) when
          I happened upon a flock of cedar waxwings—
          Said to be a gentle and politic bird—
          Sharing—very orderly—dried frozen grapes
          On the vine. (Rose hips, buckthorn, ash, pokeweed.)
          I tried one, too, the two seeds in my mouth
          Keeping me company down the mountain.
          I see no downside whatsoever
          To compensating for global warming,
          Constructing the green energy economy.
          New inventions may facilitate
          Our transportation to other planets.
          Yesterday a young man, Barack Obama,
          Won Iowa. I’m hopeful he will
          Articulate an international vision,
          A world order in which each neighborhood’s
          Good as another. I have no particular
          Love for writers; they’re a dime a dozen.
          But so are chickadees and I love them!

"Discussing the power of inscriptions of number, Harris points out:"
'Counting is in its very essence magical, if any human practice at all is. For numbers are things no one has ever seen or heard or touched. Yet somehow they exist, and their existence can be confirmed in quite everyday terms by all kinds of humdrum procedures which allow mere mortals to agree beyond any shadow of a doubt as to ‘how many’ eggs there are in a basket or ‘how many’ loaves of bread on the table.'

          True, nature would be a stern, unforgiving
          Mistress too, and man is but her right hand
          Acting on her command. How cold! How hot!
          The individual doing what he loves or not.
          Trees and cities. Herons, hawks. What we fail
          To govern in ourselves, nature will.
          We caught the killer and his gorillas,
          Now let’s go home, let the “innocent” choose
          Up sides. A good thing was done but the tyrant
          Should’ve been undone through global governance.
          Writing is divination using rhymes
          And estimations. Words like mammals
          Come near your sleeping head. Last night I emerged
          From the hum of our refrigerator
          Under a hazy, phaseless moon. The peepers
          Were an exact expression of my happiness.

"Or, one might add, for how many stanzas there are in a poem, or lines in a stanza, or stresses, feet, or syllables in a line, or occurrences of particular syntactical or grammatical patterns, and so on. As every serious student of versification has always understood, versification is about counting language."

          5:30-6 write poetry,
          6-7 ****, shave and shower, stretch
          Then get dressed, 7-7:30
          Clean house, 7:30-8 drive to work
          8-6 work (except Monday and Friday
          Work 8-4, basketball 4-6)
          6-7 drive home, shop, help make dinner
          7-8 eat dinner, read paper,
          Watch McNeil-Lehrer News Hour,
          8-9 play trumpet, study plants, type poems
          9-10 watch TV Mon: Murphy, Cybil,
          Tues: Frazier, Grace, Wed: Roseanne, Ellen,
          Thurs: Seinfeld, Friends, Fri: go out to dinner,
          10-11 read, except Tues watch
          NYPD Blue, Fri: Friday Night Lights,
          11 sleep. I could send this to the networks,
          Get a gizmo in my box. I hope my
          Schedule won't be interrupted for war.
          My dentist asked had I seen this morning’s
          Press conference, didn’t it just scare the ****
          Out of you. I said your bill is what scares
          The **** out of me. But here I am, writing
          And the sphere’s still turning. Or should I say
          Burning. As long as you write one poem per day
          You’ve left a little litter in the world.

"The reason to write verse is less to score the voice than to imbue words with the magical quality of counting. That is why meter, or measure, is at the heart of debates over all verse forms, including free verse."

          Vigorous wind, voracious ocean,
          Many merciless hard frosts, hurricanes.
          The bed of a human, its smell and warmth
          36 teeth, 46 chromosomes, 2 feet, a loose dime,
          61 summers, some soot, some sand,
          Thunderstorms. I wake up to a lightning strike
          And my dream incinerates. When they say
          Life is but a dream, that’s what they mean.
          The writer working hard, telling the story
          Of what happened yesterday or yesteryear,
          A man’s born to a country not his choosing,
          Let labor flow like capital, of mere being!
          Pomegranate juice, broccoli, arugula,
          Brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower,
          Collard greens, kale, radishes, turnips,
          Garlic, leeks, scallions, onions, 2 lbs
          Swordfish, tomatoes (8 medium),
          3 cups almonds, carrots, a sweet potato,
          Winter squash, cantaloupe, mangoes, watermelon.
          2 daily writing exercises,
          50 words on any subject: complaint, headache.
          The imagination applies a
          Countervailing pressure to reality.
          Writing badly is the best revenge.

"Number is one of the creative grounds of poetry, and the idea that writing grew out of counting is the missing link in studies of the graphic in versification. It is almost uncanny that lines of verse look exactly like the most primitive ways of counting–parallel scorings that can be numbered."

          What you do to one side of the equation
          You gotta do to the other. Isolate
          The variable. Combine like terms. Metaphors
          And analogs are reduced to least common
          Denominators. Multiply through (parentheses).
          Write a new equation after each operation.
          Inscribe neatly. Check your work. Imagine
          That if you’re wrong, the astronauts burn.
          Change the signs which will avoid going
          The wrong way down the number line. Zero
          Is the middle of your universe.
          There it is, calm, comfortable as an egg
          On a spoon. That is, before possibilities
          Become probabilities. This is just
          Another equation manipulated
          With opposable digits. For at the ends
          Of your guns is the earliest calculator
          A magical machine which converts
          Numbers to words and words to numbers,
          Measures the mists, frequency and wavelength,
          Of the material penumbra.

"Verses are countable in exactly the way that token-iterative digits are countable, from either end of the sequence. Each one indicates only its singularity, not a number. Every poem in lines effaces, or predates, the distinction between writing and drawing in the same way as the lines on the Ishango bone."

I NEVER HAS SEEN SNOW

I lived my life as if
I had been written
into a Barbara Pym novel

so prim and proper lady I
my soul smoother'd in camphor
yet my life...wot the mot hath got

and here I be
curled upon the Persian rug
in the foetal position

being born
into my dying
as it were

me an elaborate motif
beside an exquisite phoenix
oh the warp and woof of me

so this is death
rather nice
as these things go

not too much( ouch )pain
more easeful and slow and
when ya gotta go...ya...gotta go

rather like that Manx man
was it Brown...or...something
"...if thou couldst empty..." oh what is it?

"...all thy self of self
to be a shell dishabited..."
bit like ha ha that...innit( agghh )

wonder what an anthropologist
from...say...Borneo
would make of me

I'd guess I'd be
so quaintly ever so English
so cue-cumber sandwich

settling down with a Pimms and a Pym
being one of those Excellent Women
**** this dying....haven't even read the book

only got as far as
p.15...how mean
the great unread

the words sticking in my brain
something being "...a welcoming
sort of place...

with a bright entrance..."
as if Mr. Death were saying
"Why...that's what I am!"

"Yeah, yeah...sure sure'"
I answer all Film Noir
another of life's little pleasures

the stuffed bird
stares at me sternly
deigns to speak

"Now that you are going to be
as dead as me...may I
have a word?"

it coughs unaccustomed
as it is
to public speech

"It's not so bad
being dead
it's being stuffed that hurts!"

the cat joins in
with its customary "I'm starving...
ya couldn't open this tin?"

now the cat howls
oh to have opposable thumbs
or a can opener at least

the stuffed bird and the cat and I
singing along to Beverly Kenny
smiling from the record sleeve

"Oh this used to be
my favourite as a girl
'I Never Has Seen Snow."

"Oh the girl I used to be
she ain't me no more!"
I could always carry a tune

the stuffed bird can't
sing for nuts but
the cat's got a good tenor voice

me...I'm letting go
the world is walking out on me
the world don't want to know me no more

I've even forget
can you Adam and Eve it
how to spell... fo'c's'le

my garden looks in
the window at me
well here's a howdy do

I never was '...a lovesome thing..."
even when young
"God wot!"

hee hee hee T.E. Brown
appears to invade the mind
when one is dying

and what would that Borneo
anthropologist make of that
or my love of Jazz

grabbing the music
by the tail as it shape-shifts
improvises world upon world and beyond

oh to be dying
in a smokey jazz club
thoughts climbing a spiral staircase of smoke

"All that is...is not!"
now I wonder where
I got ha ha that

would the man from Borneo know
that is Phil Woods on
the Quincey Jones arrangement

"Oh I love sax me!
never could say the same
for ***

well - enough of that
better get on with
my death

and what better way to go
than with Beverly singing low
always thought I looked a bit like her

she smiles that record sleeve smile
the one I tried to sculpt
upon my own features

"I saw a new horizon
and a road to take me
where I wanted to be...needed to be.... took"

"God! I'm only starving!" yowls the cat
"Ya couldn't feed me before ya go...no
**** those...**** those cans!"

"Oh ****...oh ****!" she purrs
the record's...the record's...the record's
stuck

the doom puke treacle of our dim sum sundays, asunderous.
the bluff of our taurus. the trim thumb, green on the terrace
of our epiphanies; wondrous.
the crease in the pleat of our borealis. the allusive chalice
of our majesty. the dead kingdoms we relinquish to the roiling unjoy.
the thunder of our feet to the heel of a shadow. our peter pan in the fire.
our kettles black.
the opposable lovelies. the lovelies that preen jewels. the extreme youth of our gods
now at the hour of our foolishness. our funny bone. and the fracture.
the actual damage to our heaven. and the near after.
the gross bloom of our anguish
and parade.

and the bells. and the comma. and the laughter.

Tree of proto-monkeys,
brand and banded under Monkey King,
so clever, so adaptive
in substance and doing -
mushrooming in variants:
lemurs, monkeys old and new,
orangutans, gorillas, chimps,
and one big bushy brood
of extincted ***** brothers and you.

Trekking upright into dale,
valleys and over hills too
sore in feet to image
dragging a knuckle or two.

Scavengers making way,
scanning for patterns in
food moving or not,
adaptive doing from fin
to opposable rock.

Written August 31, 2012 (the day after my birthday!)

It actually baffles me, how the human heart works. As a species, us humans enjoy believing we're the best species, we're far more advanced than any other animal, we're so much smarter, we have technology... and opposable thumbs! But in reality, though our inventions and creations are the most advanced, really we're just like animals in the wild. In the end, it all comes down to instinct. Recently, I found this fact in myself to be remarkably true. We have someone in our lives we care about, for example. Instinctually, we want to protect them, so when they do something bad, naturally we want to defend them, especially after seeing them going through hard times. Your defensive instinct skyrockets and you make excuses for them and defend their right to make mistakes after what they've been through but there comes a point when your instinct to protect yourself overpowers your instinct to protect someone else separate from yourself. Especially after finding out you had been defending them for nothing and all this changes in a couple days.

fed the birds.
fed the birds a
book about
my dead  
weight.
fed the
birds a heavy.
fed them from
my thin
hands. The words
that live.
The birds ate.
The birds ate words that
lived and always
lived
in
separate
houses. if...
and i mean if
and only if
they
could afford
it.
if these
clever pagans
ever had
a dime.
they found
it boring rich
folk to
death.

i fed the birds
my indigenous
nomads. they dined
in high style...
dined black and
fancy
on
shabby
addicts, as they
hopped
trains . i fed the birds
my
swarthy tribe.
and they supped.
i fed the birds
a monologue
with trains of
thought
the words i fed
them... the vagabonds...
hopped
trains.

of thought.

I fed
the birds.
i fed the birds just
outside.
i sat
and fed them
black light and Harmalade
fed them blackly
fed them with
piano keys;  the black
ones, the ones
that radiate
i fed

i watched them. watched
them fancy peck. and peck
and fancy
pluck.
i watched. they dined
on serene defeat
by technicality.
it was surreal
to watch a blackbird
pluck from black
keys - peck
a morsel of glum
from

the black rays, yes.

the black rays with
opposable thumbs
and a
lifeline. the only one i
know forbidding gypsies
with three eyes.
an open
palm.
a paranoid  
black radish
white dwarf star
with piano keys
for black rays
of

nimbus, yes

mine is the hand that bites the hand
that writes the book
it wants
to ban, that ain't
a fan

not at all. just an appendage. a pen dirge ? What ?

i  fed the flock lots

I fed
the black ones -
with dolls'
eyes...

tucked
under
wing.

i fed them, yes.

a book
about the size
of any welcome
malcontent.

i fed
them sorrows
and ellipses with
adjacent lawns.
wutherings in
stately manors, squatting
on either side
of memory
lane, like
a bourbon and
coke had
practically crawled
across shards
of hard
things to break,
with a drink
in your
hand

and crawled, well blended

down the hatch
of enormous, well appointed
gothic frogs, that -
were mostly refurbished toads
with odd columns.

i fed
the birds,
broke out the
Good
Chi
na

hang the tantrums !  

yes
One should expect
a rich metaphor to want to
watch you
eat it's every
word
or
by extension;
lick the toad with 15 rooms,
three stories, unfit for children
and a full staff
of Adjectives,
highly trained
to

short-sheet the Bedlam, and fluff the pillories.

one should sip the liqueur
off the floor, inside the huge
and tipsy
gorgon
and be thankful
for the dank
and

the solid gold flyswatters.

they're complementary. take one
as you leave out
thinking
" toads, eat flies.... so it follows...."
apropos of nothing, on the
' Good China ',

now in the belly of birds, well fed
an unwell.

a book about
my dead-weight's
dream
to eat fewer
flies and
more
steak.

to grow wings.

yes.

Eskimos have a Gazillion
words for snow. We have
teraflop words for coffee.

Wikipedia it!
But don't get distracted
by the Tales.

Recounted stories of empires
held together by zeitgeist brand,
a belief, a set of ritual,
buying in bulk, a role of thumb,
opposable heuristics.

They've clustered history
in bunches like expanding
matter, as if it matters
who was king or Augustus.

Empires & civilization
held colloidal by the quirks
of geology and brand
feeding food-forward
with ritualistic sacrifice
in Megazillion iterations.

From Fertile crescent to Nile
Valley silicon, when we bind
ourselves to brand,
and move in belief,
secure in synchronized stability,
then comes the rubric cubes
miraculously built high
upon slave backs, holding
pyramidal server tombs.

I feel my opposable thumbs
The taste of blood in my mouth
The galactic waves have swallowed us
the shock is hitting our bodies
slower and faster
all at once eyes go black

reason is no longer
instinct is our only conscious
lives are minimal
men driven by procreation;women by fear

hearts feign
claws sharpen
jaws unfurl
reality manifests;
we are all animals

My tummy box is broken
Said the man to the spoon
******* rhymings
To satisfy good tidings
Fake smiles to satisfy
Good people

Satisfied with what I make
Dissatisfied with what I take
Broken satisfaction
A one-man factioned

We all suffer from
Insecurities
So take what’s best of me.
I seem to be the worst at what I do.

Can I visit weekly? Is that cool by You?
I can make a fool of myself at least once a week.
Can you turn so I can smack Your other cheek?
4th wall broken, here’s a token of my gratitude.
I play the fool for a feeling that’s earthly
Wait with baited breath, I’m almost done.

FBI shopping, lets find a bomb to blow.
Legalize this to make me okay with it.
Let’s party it up to make me feel better.
A good grind to get my mind off things.

Opposing the opposable
Folding to the foldable
All I am seems worthless
All I am seems ridiculous.

A pool with no walls in
An ocean with no souls
Has no choice.
Fate is the tyrant,
The trident even Poseidon controls not.

You cannot drown if you’ve never breathed air.
“Be no one like everyone,”
She laughs, “Equality 7-2521.”
My mouth remains frozen in the frown,
Brows furrowed down.

Disgusted by sheep, I never wear wool.
The fibers stick, ****, suffocate,
Even when dry.
No one else minds it. In fact,
They say “baa” and wear the same masks.

“Bah,” I mutter into ripples.
Witness myself in reflection, introspection,
Retrospection: the id is omniscient;
Individuals are conventional, rarely exceptional;
Explanations are like Time,

They wound and heal.
Truth is disposable, honesty opposable.
Disillusionment is discovery,
Disgusting, discarding, disregarding,
Disblahblahbinizing.

Splash the water, pause the thought process.
Steal fate’s trident, bend it
Into a bubble wand.
When dawn dawns,
Daintily dip the stick in.

A big, blue bubble is born
With each breath, with each blow.
I enter the bubble, in peaceful pace,
Gently lay down,
Knees kiss my face.

Sigh with relief, rebirth, rediscovery.
The ultimate revolution ending
In victory,
In magnificent realizations,
In my last gasp.

All we are; I implore you
Come out
Come out

Isolation is icy
Useless frozen wrenches

All we are
Smartthings with hearts
Opposable thumbs & firethrowers

Isolation is icy
The Pope of Murk & Decay

All we are
Every fiber of DNA and
Every lost phone number on a napkin

All we are
Overgrown starry eyed babi  es
Happy birthday candles

All we are,
The cemeteries of our parents
Drain holes at the oceanfloor

Isolation is icy
Now,
          melt.

"I kissed a feminist once",
he says, face flushed blotchy, something heavy resting on his shoulders
maybe
“I kissed a feminist once,”
and everybody laughs
“she was cold as ice,” he says
and he doesn’t mention how I turned
warm beneath his fingers,
heated up like embers
and reduced his bed to flame and ashes
“God was she mean,” he says
but he hasn’t forgotten the time
I told him to be kind to himself, to
purge the poison from his veins and
scrape the smoke from his lungs
“I love you I love you I love you”
I said,
“please love yourself too”
“I kissed a feminist once,”
he says, to loud guffaws,
an elbow in his side
and he doesn’t say “her lips
were the softest thing to ever brush
my collar bone”
he doesn’t say “she made playlists in my mind”
or “she covered me like a blanket”
or “her teeth on my earlobe ripped me open and scattered me across the sheets of her twin bed”
he doesn’t say “I loved that
storm of a girl,
I loved her heavy at 4am I loved
her like pennies
at the bottom of a fountain
like memorized freckles
I loved her like depth perception
like opposable thumbs
I loved her I loved her I loved her”
and instead he shrugs
that heavy thing off his shoulders
and shrugs the feel of my lips
off his chest and he says,
“she was a crazy ***** anyway”
- Lily Cigale

In the midweek of twelves months I torched blunts and choked on wet smoke and chamomile tea.
Fretting the niggling giblets of a queasy disrememberance of a sober stroll through your tossed hair salad.
I managed to mangle  the marvelous gross lust of our impending
delirium. i farmed bok choy to annoy our local siege. our muskets were polished with misdeeds.
our demons barked, all coy and ravenous in the sweet diffuse of our useless aplomb.
ginger rockets in our thespian numb. you Dis-Oriental surrogate Mom.
You.... flame folding cranes, like a Japanese cancer
with opposable thumbs.
Unstoppable in the dead wink
of an awkward eye
upon your heaving *******.

You burn regardless.

OK. Today may be dull. It happens. Sure.
But tomorrow remains rife with possibilities.

Podcasts of Trump on on the value of modesty.
Street fights in several extinct languages.
Hillary wins at Detroit poetry slam.
Jihadists explode poodles in crosswalks.
Island countries wave & grin as they sink.
***** flicks found starring Merkel and Putin.
A sane, reasonable presidential election.
Angry cats with opposable thumbs rebel.
Men & women speaking & understanding each other.
Brock Turner announces *** change operation.
God announces: No More Mulligans!
Gender wars conclude. Everyone’s dead.
Debut of lost Bach Partita for Electric Kazoo.
New, hip-hop production of Treblinka: The Musical.
Shakespeare cloned. Buys poetry anthology. Dies.
End-up, instead of start-up, launches in Palo Alto.
Smart phones install apps with annoying ads on users.
Common sense becomes common again.
Victimless rhymes decriminalized.

This is America! Never two dull days.
Take Heart! Tomorrow, there be Wonders…

Monkeys in cars
Strumming guitars
La la la la’s
We ain’t all that

Shaving our faces
Finding new places
Tying our laces
We ain’t all that

Appliance reliance
Making new science
Moral compliance
We ain’t all that

Leaving our instinct
Down at the precinct
Never be distinct
We ain’t all that

Barely evolved
Nothing resolved
Power absolved
We ain’t all that

Opposable thumbs
Beating our drums
Hating our mums
We ain’t all that

Intelligent beings
Believing is seeing
Rather be skiing
We ain’t all that

Monkeys in space
Saving our face
Playing the ace
We ain’t all that

Living the dream
Not what it seems
Chicken Supremes
We ain’t all that

Monkeys in cars
Smoking cigars
Staring at stars
We ain’t all that

Monkeys in cars
Counting their scars
Filling the bars
We ain’t all that

Monkeys in suits
All in cahoots
Playing their flutes
We ain’t all that

Where’s little Bo Peep
Cos we are just sheep
And this poem ain’t deep
I ain’t all that

Take the stake and break my skin, guaranteed your hands will get covered in sin
For God's sake we're in this lake of blood but we aren't getting any younger,
look at how childish we've been

Twisted games and wandering ghouls, how quick we are to sell our souls
Lost and searching, grieving and wailing
The Great Perhaps may be our downfall

But may the scars litter the places you've touched
We're older, none the wiser and still we do not amount to much
Steal and cheat, we break our vows

To make something of what we had when we left town
Mystical dreams and whimsical fancies, we let ourselves rot to the tales
A dance with Death and burnt flesh, we sacrifice only to burn in hell.

Able minded fables with opposable thumbs, writing how we wanted things to be
On the picket fence like it's a clock, it's become my job to leave the decision to you

But I'm  done following footsteps that have become too big for my soul
Let me slip back into my cocoon until I remember, again, how it feels to fly on my own

A multitude of voices trying to influence my choices
Making notes of what they deem to be right and wrong
And by Royal Decree, they deem themselves as the most supreme
To have sights on only one road and forgetting of the others that are at their disposal

And my mind takes it in like a dry sponge over water
Overloading, always screaming
And it drives me into myself again, just further
Learning to let go of the only thing keeping a firm hold of reality to finally being free

Crack open the crevices of my chest
And let my soul be freed of the binding hands
Holding it back from what it seeks
A never-ending spiral of vertigo

You need have
no faith in a God or belief in the good
a good God will believe in you,
now,
whether or not that is true
I leave to
the theosophists.

I buried them in a shallow grave

outside the sunroom where their cage hung

rain washed their bones into a deep earth cellar

Where I descend by night with my lone candle

to find them fixed in strata, yet not fixed

scaled claws striking Jurassic dragonflies



My shadow flickers and dissolves

as I sit at the sunroom desk

Tiny scaled claws strike my head

Pinioned dervishes scold:

My suit of black and white feathers

my smooth hands and my scientist's smirk

my two-finger typing and opposable thumbs

my missing wings and manifesting teeth



We dinosaurs live on, incantations of ancestral rebirth

templates used, discarded, and used again

as our sphere cycles on, now warming, now cooling

the uniforms change, the costumes evolve

but the sudden-death scrimmage is eternal.

The wicked, they come
In a cerulean dream.
The cellar door opened,
With an opposable thumb.

A disposable past
And no ties in the future,
They live within ******
And die through their caste.

Oh, Ford! They cry out
For all of their blessings.
Oh, Ford! I cry too,
To drown silent doubt.

“Take me to your room.”
She breathes, voice coppered,
She conducts me. Unzips in
One movement, fit to bloom.

“Lenina,” I call,
Eyes blinded by her colour.
In a world so built and grey,
I live only in her sprawl.

We finish, my heart descending.
She nicks her lips to my ear,
Then reminds me thus;
“Ending is better than mending.”

To bed we fall; once, twice, thrice.
Each time I cling longer,
Wrap her in bedsheets,
‘Till she feels our ****** splice.

With no use, she’s gone
To some other embrace.
Some cold shouldered support,
Then to the salon.

She’ll tell all to her friends,
A gaggle of giggles.
And he’ll speak of her,
Like some means to an end.

“Pneumatic,” is she,
He’ll say with no stutter,
“You should have her,” he’ll offer,
Like the fruit from a tree.

No, like meat, like meat,
She is passed around.
Like animals, the Alphas
Bruise, **** and maltreat.

Community. Snake-like,
It moves as if one.
Each person a muscle,
Not separate but a part.

Identity. It blurs,
‘Till I forget the use
Of my name. Push it out,
Repeat in my dreams.

Stability. It comes,
A two-gramme holiday.
A superficial guffaw
That veneers my face.

Oh, Soma! Come take me,
From where I don’t belong.
To where passions are birthed
Far from the hatchery.

To where feelings are heartfelt,
Not found in a pill.
Where waistlines aren’t throttled
By a Malthusian belt.

A savage I am,
In my pursuit for more.
When I long for freedom,
And not another half-gramme.

Gaia, she held us in her womb.
From fish to ape, she mothered too.
Now all that’s left is this soulless gloom
Where man is born only to consume.

I was the small animal, shivering in the cave,
Scarcely breathing, trapped, pushed in.
My beating heart revved like a motor engine,
Like adrenaline in fierce hostilities.
Though I could not see it,
I was too busy trying to frolic among the alpha-males,
As though that was the only way to live,
Sharpening my claws when I could have been sharpening my cunning,
Because here we live not understanding,
That not everyone is gonna flaunt themselves as the big dog.

I’m out now,
I grew opposable thumbs and was able to turn the key,
And say “Do svedanya”
To what I realized was just,
A pile of males competing to be on top.

If people wish to take a stand,
Against something they cannot truly feel,
Then I implore you,
Do my lungs not breathe the same air as you do?
Does my heart not beat just as yours does?
Do my eyes not perceive the same wonders as you do?

For those of you who enjoy
Distinguishing right and wrong,
Look at the animal to your left and
Watch if he tries to steal from your plate
Instead of letting your eyes burn
With that overwhelming rage.
Those claws can’t scratch the surface
On understanding that the same blood
Flows within our veins.

Unlike The "Opposable Thumb"
The ******* is profane.
Articulating that which translates,and
Transcends the barriers of speech;
Into a powerful two word force.

In most language... We love to speak
With "Middle Fingers" as a paradox -
Expressing something we love doing....
To loved ones.Though offered on other
Occasions To the "Woes of or Foes"

As for foes, we gesture our
"Middle Fingers" At those who we
Do not like in the least bit.
"Opposable thumbs" only disagree.

"******* flashing" is a concepts of thoughts.
Paradox or a paragon that epitomizes
The disdain when shot straight up,as in
" Shot a bird.". ***** ole men wiggle it at minors.

The "*******" goes straight to the point
Especially If directed pointedly at you.
Men can beckon their wives with "That Finger"
Only If they are smiling.

Sit very still.

I will come, if I’m willing.
And I am.

Words build up
like hairs in my mouth. Lines that wind, and stick
I try to speak,
but they will knot
and compliments come out as hacks and coughs,
not the purrs I had imagined.

I am not graceful, I do not always land on my feet.

I try to leave you presents,
things I find, things you might enjoy.
but I’m met with confused faces, tinged with distaste,
when my attempts fall dead and blood stained.

Do not touch me.

I am embarrassed by my lack of opposable thumbs, my hairy coat.
I have teeth and claws;
and I will use them in abundance.

I am cute, but not substantial, nothing heavy enough to lean on,
just heavy enough to weigh you down.

I run;
behind the couch, under the bed,
watching safely in a dark closet.
please,
Do not touch me.

He raised his first digit
To blot out the opposable world
Oh, how a spinning ball of blue
Can make you feel so small
So why return?
They’re not ready there
They’re not ready for you yet
Packed like sardines and spinning free
Packed like sardines and spinning free
Heroic archetypes reign in the above
An empty moon, a dancing dove
Explorer of the unadorned
Seduced by revelations
Away from duty
Away from wife
Away from country
Away from strife
Hanging in the skies are
Famous stars with their own spotlights
Celestial buddhas in unending caves
Connect the dots within their circles
But the petty ball of blue beckons you
With broken and fragile chaos
A siren of the busy blind
Asking you to wear a watch
And follow leaders who
Should be following you
Rather stay in the tin can and be
Packed like sardines, spinning free
Packed like sardine, spinning free

Moon on the horizon.
Soft breeze rattles the
brambles out by the
old barn.
The cat enters, looks
about and begins to
speak.

“Fears take flight after years
of drinking the tears away
while the days responsibilities
are laughable in the light of
satori's brilliant realization.
Silly, silly man, thinking reality
something to achieve, a destination
to discover, a journey to undertake.
Listen and I will tell you what little
I have learned burning away my
short time on this horizon of
understanding.
All that is transitory is a metaphor
for the eternal and all that is eternal
is a metaphor for the self.
The self is the collective consciousness
we all share and what we share is our
experience of being.
Being is nothing but an illusion created
in the mind of God while God is simply
a metaphor for eternity in the mind of
man.
Now pour me some kibble for I know
many things, but do not possess opposable
thumbs”.

I woke with a start, cursing the spinning
room and swearing never to mix Jameson
and Absolute again.
The cat finished her kibble and crapped
in the litter box.

woman
we have fought this war before
do you remember this feeling
in the absence of dawn
our swords shaped like crescent moons
and our fists clenching into pond water
thin Lilly pads healing old soars
lovers spinning around the orbit
of a woman's thigh
spine trembling
I will not give up
because I have shared too many shades of indigo to be the other woman
I have given too much silk and lavender air to be a bedtime story
a midnight call
borrowed time
an option
a lie

woman
I have fought this war
limbs bending into someone who can win affection
If there ever was a way
I have given my palms to him
the curve of my body
the backs of my ears
my opposable thumbs
my sweet tooth
I have given him not everything
but the choice to take
anything

because fighting and war are two different things
one is of passion, unexpected,
the other are waves of the loudest ocean
a never ending grudge of today's and tomorrow's
a tug of war in the infinite universe
rooted from centuries of ancestors who have lost
a battle destined before birth
fighting and war are two different things
one will pass
the other won't
and that's when I know I have won

Boys are great
they say what they think
think what they do
say when they want you.
Boys are fun
They risk life and limb
just for a swim
Drink like fish
Eat the whole dish
Boys are interesting
they sit and twiddle
Opposable thumbs were
invented for them.
Yes I think I'll stick with boys

A Billion Stories
Book III: Conclusions
Part III: The Snake of Enlightenment


Let him think!
Let him, have seen!
Beauty should not be an opposable thing!
Wisdom is greatness! 
Go hide from the group!
My love is not laughter,
My love is for truth!
Don't bid farewell to everything!
Don't look at the scene in reverse!
And let wisdom be shown,
But not only for words!