My Frankenstein monster*
erects in the dense night
a soliloquies of remedies
traced on pasted wall paper

It bids faster as the kites fly
high above the Himalayan
feeding respect to the sun
to radiate its vector rays

It whispers of this world
a spice of colours and patterns
a windy dainty silky road
wrapped with satanic ribbons

As the masses gather on the poles
to dance the mayday festival
the pagan gods shake the monster
their gold merry as the cloud chills

The bonfire embers and trembles
the palates vanish in the ashy wind
the crowds grow in bonded unity
*the monster smiles in rhymed terms

This morning
Damp with it all
The purple tongues
Of the Irises
Threaten to speak of painful memories

She always loved the spring
That the Irises announced
Arriving on palates
Of green and violet
Promises of tender possibilities

But, the spring never really changed
Anything of substance and
Colors run in summer rains
Pooling into charcoal swirls

And the Irises died
With a vain promise
Whispered into tomorrow’s
Memories

Some demons are born from malice
Sky rending hatred and blood storms
Such are demons of unending passion
Some demons are born from greed
Covetous grins and shifty hands
Such are demons of delirious nature
Some demons are born of desire
Coquette gazes and glazed eyes
Such are demons of temptation
Some demons are born from hunger
Thirsty tongues and soft palates
Such are demons of gluttony
Some demons are born from envy
Green eyes and clenched teeth
Such are demons of bitterness
Some demons are born of laziness
Slow movement and emotionless
Such are demons of apathy
Some demons are both of the self
Arrogant demeanor and fearless gaze
Such are demons of pride
All are demons, that come from oneself
But the true evil of sin
Is the self.

After Midnight
The narcissists fall
After Midnight
A new lyric calls

After Midnight
Last bugle to blow
After Midnight
There’s more left to know

After Midnight
The lizards collect
After Midnight
Old tales to reflect

After Midnight
The ticking will stop
After Midnight
The bottom will top

After Midnight
A cancerous tome
After Midnight
Malignancy known

After Midnight
Betray and deceive
After Midnight
Alone in the siege

After Midnight
All footsteps fall deaf
After Midnight
Lost palates are cleft

After Midnight
New story to front
After Midnight
Two stars for the dunce

After Midnight
The comets rebel
After Midnight
The coroners yell

After Midnight
A suit made of steel
After Midnight
Its melting reveals

After Midnight
That voice in the back
After Midnight
There’s no turning back

After Midnight
A sacred oath sworn
After Midnight
All memory forlorn

After Midnight
The wheels bend and churn
After Midnight
Lost vision returns

After Midnight
False birth is stillborn
After Midnight
Old vestments are torn

After Midnight
The here and the now
After Midnight
That one sacred cow

After Midnight
Past-Future unseen
After Midnight
  —creation redeemed

(Villanova Pennsylvania: March, 2015)

In the wild
You are left to consider graffiti disasters
hatched from gypsy palates
Vanished in music through spiders

In a wilderness of orange viral light
Moths push from the lips of willow switch
Geishas who stargaze on
Matrimonial black powder

In our wilderness of birth the
Name of Fire is swallowed by moths
We are reborn in Geisha operas
Over the embers of burned invention

You sign the word for sand
In a lamplight hem
A voice skating chalk
Points over pearl

Its pitch wound in a white
Arched wax arm
Ticking the membrane
In her submerged bell

Muscles grip and relax, grip and relax, grip and fight and tighten.
My fingers caress the blown glass between my lips, thoughtfully I stare cross eyed into the flame brought to life by the stroke of my thumb.
Feral beats in the background of this still life pulsing, invigorating the senses;
awakening the monster as it shrieks out for breath.
And so I pull another blow between my teeth, the air tainted and tasting so sweet.
Here stand these false philosophers with me as we shiver against the clawing of a wind so cold,
but we are brought together by our love for the fire.
A network of interlaced fingers keeps the flame alive as we **** out the life-giving tendrils from gaia’s hands,
she sends us spiraling upward until our ankles graze the treetops and we are looking down on city life from the crown of heaven.
My comrades bear their bruises closed and tongue-tied, and as we fly dark hints of the world below materialize on their lips.
The stroke of each errant brush paints their words black and white as I sing color across my broken sanctuary, stubbornly fighting for this bliss that only I exist within,
carrying no burden from the world below, I let my innocence fly me higher in this treetop temple.
I break the surface of a sea of clouds, no comrade to accompany me now;
none would follow anyhow.
The freedom screams from my fingertips like thunder and with every movement I hurl another one of Zeus’s famed bolts down onto the earth, dancing with the electricity; though when you’re so high up here there is no storm.
I watch as the others begin to fall back down into the earth’s open arms, equipping their synthetic smiles, for where they are going there is no joy.
My grin glitters like the stars I greet with open palms, smoothing my fingers across their warm fuzzy forms, gathering them into night-sky pictures for the beings down below.
I place each star carefully in my dark connect-the-dot drawing, swirling stardust in the blank spaces for tonight I paint a masterpiece.
As it takes shape my painting depicts a world so far away from the one I hail from, I almost wonder how I can even picture it.
I soar on ethereal wings to planets and galaxies until homesickness sweeps my winged shoes back toward the blue planet, eyes misted over with nostalgia for those days when I,
the fire and the philosophers would breathe together.
When I touch back down, my wings fold tight against my shoulders; curving firm and solid against my back.
I am a stone gargoyle, now guarding this world that I fought so hard to protect myself from.
and I, the fire and the philosophers break out our synthetic smiles.
For where we are going, there is no joy.
The vague and flimsy memories we have of our treetop haven melt misty smooth across mental palates that still ache for the taste of fire-breath, for the swirls of hazy wonder that alit our dry smiles to burn for real.
But my philosophers have become pharisees and now I quail and quake under the weight of my sky-paintings.
The gravity down here keeps my lips tilted down in the echoes of another man’s sorrow and my sympathy for their morose self-titled melodrama is running thin.
If  I could, I’d be tiptoeing among the stars, hop scotching across constellations, at home in my world of skies and fire.
And I am shocked once more, grounded suddenly by the voice of the pharisees and their stone hearts;

mourning for I,
The fire,
And the philosophers.

I was once God's Picasso painting
(the Guernica era).
Chuck Jones' illustration
of the tortured artist,
laid out like Wile E. Coyote
on a bed of scalding rocks
and a white flag screaming "SURRENDER"
clenched with both palms.

If it were feasible,
I'd have dove head first
into the smoky center of the sun
if it meant my audience understood
the shrieking woes I had to bellow through
to reach their overwhelmed palates.

But Tragedy is the sitcom foil
that has long outstayed its menopausal welcome,
and I would much prefer a haunting.

To Hell with those
who repulse the flies with
the vinegar of exploitation,
gawking as their spit seeps
through seven layers of collected scars,
who ventilate the wrists
to keep the audience comfortable.

Real aesthetic power
comes from a shower
of light hail on the spine,
the moments a ghostly hand
****** you on the finger
with quietly hidden truths
always whispered from a field away.

It's far more bracing,
the lump in the throat,
not the electrical gasp of shock.

It's a far greater sign
of a forthcoming apocalypse,
the angel weeping in pain,
not the footsteps
of the wailing banshee.

The wisp
over the wallop.

Fermented undergarments
farmers markets, Targets, turn tarnish!
An angle of self-righteousness moves to left.
.
a group of cleft palates peel all the way back for the attic
after a thousand years of theft. (Arent you in awe?)
when hairless hands wrap and grab Tef – lon
get on one of the seven horses.
Hercules the matter seems urgent
Please
create morses.
.
Your Torsos show their bland position
portable valves, three of horse pistons.
so if they want violence, they certainly will achieve.
shout above the crowd and call for former foreigners – roll up sleeves.
in the white and black reality  
we flee once we believe
.
but perfection is a perspective
the artist is just an elective and a given
IN GETTING BITTEN BY THE SOCIAL TAPE WORM –
we let the world squirm  -
and turn
tighter in silky cob webs
the spider traps and they took laps
‘til the insect bled out

1744

The joy that has no stem no core,
Nor seed that we can sow,
Is edible to longing.
But ablative to show.

By fundamental palates
Those products are preferred
Impregnable to transit
And patented by pod.

Monet, Manet, Morisot, and the tortured Vincent
a long century or more ago,
filled their palates with color,
their canvases with impressions of life, love and loss.
And we, the great masters of civilization,
have treasured these like newborn babes.

I wandered through the polished halls
of antiquities to see them—
some hidden even from the harsh light of day
to protect their precious prinking from decay.
I strained my eyes to see their soulful strokes
and wondered why artists carried such painful yokes

McMurtry’s ranch has no paintings
but sculptures from a vanished sea.
A quarter billion years it’s been,
and yet they’re here for all to see

Rocks carved by patient scratching time
and stock tanks covered with putrid slime.
No lilies float on pools of blue
and no guard carefully watches you

Their sentries are the desert rattlers
and the sun scorched prairie lands,
but these ancient masterpieces
are safe from filching hands.

When I kneel on hard rock soil,
I forget my daily useless toil
and dig in clean eternal dirt
with no canvases to belie the hurt
of gentle men who felt the call
to let their heart be seen by all

Monet, Manet, and Morisot
are now laid to rest, with their burdens set aside,
but their colors are a reminder
that beauty and suffering abide

McMurtry’s rocks no longer feel,
but who could say they are less real
than colors fading from the light
and lonely artists’ painful plight.

Epilogue to "A Vision'

MIDNIGHT has come, and the great Christ Church Bell
And may a lesser bell sound through the room;
And it is All Souls' Night,
And two long glasses brimmed with muscatel
Bubble upon the table.  A ghost may come;
For it is a ghost's right,
His element is so fine
Being sharpened by his death,
To drink from the wine-breath
While our gross palates drink from the whole wine.
I need some mind that, if the cannon sound
From every quarter of the world, can stay
Wound in mind's pondering
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound;
Because I have a marvellous thing to say,
A certain marvellous thing
None but the living mock,
Though not for sober ear;
It may be all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
Horton's the first I call.  He loved strange thought
And knew that sweet extremity of pride
That's called platonic love,
And that to such a pitch of passion wrought
Nothing could bring him, when his lady died,
Anodyne for his love.
Words were but wasted breath;
One dear hope had he:
The inclemency
Of that or the next winter would be death.
Two thoughts were so mixed up I could not tell
Whether of her or God he thought the most,
But think that his mind's eye,
When upward turned, on one sole image fell;
And that a slight companionable ghost,
Wild with divinity,
Had so lit up the whole
Immense miraculous house
The Bible promised us,
It seemed a gold-fish swimming in a bowl.
On Florence Emery I call the next,
Who finding the first wrinkles on a face
Admired and beautiful,
And knowing that the future would be vexed
With 'minished beauty, multiplied commonplace,
preferred to teach a school
Away from neighbour or friend,
Among dark skins, and there
permit foul years to wear
Hidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.
Before that end much had she ravelled out
From a discourse in figurative speech
By some learned Indian
On the soul's journey.  How it is whirled about,
Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach,
Until it plunge into the sun;
And there, free and yet fast,
Being both Chance and Choice,
Forget its broken toys
And sink into its own delight at last.
And I call up MacGregor from the grave,
For in my first hard springtime we were friends.
Although of late estranged.
I thought him half a lunatic, half knave,
And told him so, but friendship never ends;
And what if mind seem changed,
And it seem changed with the mind,
When thoughts rise up unbid
On generous things that he did
And I grow half contented to be blind!
He had much industry at setting out,
Much boisterous courage, before loneliness
Had driven him crazed;
For meditations upon unknown thought
Make human ******* grow less and less;
They are neither paid nor praised.
but he d object to the host,
The glass because my glass;
A ghost-lover he was
And may have grown more arrogant being a ghost.
But names are nothing.  What matter who it be,
So that his elements have grown so fine
The fume of muscatel
Can give his sharpened palate ecstasy
No living man can drink from the whole wine.
I have mummy truths to tell
Whereat the living mock,
Though not for sober ear,
For maybe all that hear
Should laugh and weep an hour upon the clock.
Such thought -- such thought have I that hold it tight
Till meditation master all its parts,
Nothing can stay my glance
Until that glance run in the world's despite
To where the ****** have howled away their hearts,
And where the blessed dance;
Such thought, that in it bound
I need no other thing,
Wound in mind's wandering
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound.

Aching flesh calls
To aching flesh
Chests touch
Lips compress
Part
Wet tongues intersect
Clothing shredded into tatters
And scattered
Hesitation abandoned
Nails on hot skin
Lips leave marks on necks
A patchwork of red and pale
Never fail hips
slip inside
Two become one
As the fervor increases
Pheromone aura releases
And a story is added to the tower of pleasures
Vibrating
Pulsating
Slow rhythmic thrusting
Clasped
Grasped
Connected in four places
Pleasure painted faces
Individual palates blending
Pulling apart and separating
So that eyes can lock in ocular embraces
Unification of purpose
Invisible bonds reinforced
As tremors cascade from fluid cohesion
One thousand demons scream in the ashes of a dream,
As one, that were two, become Legion.

Leaves fell
          p
            er
              p
                e­
                  tu
                    al
                    ­  ly
                               as we
didn't,
BuT I (your ardent lo>er)
Choose to smite
                         the indigenous winds and
                         forests' unpledged palates with
: A Stony Subjection:

Red – the colors match underneath
the mashing of trashed feet. A bittersweet
scent swishes around our soft palates
until intoxication renders us useless.

The artificial artisan could’ve gone lighter,
but she knew it wouldn’t have been as
beautiful. I gasp and gaze, looking for the
fake signs that she had felt the same.

I am the moon
Illuminating the darkness which paralyzes my trust.
At night is when I feel both familiar and yet not at all--
I could disappear. Evaporate.
I could Exhale slowly and become a living eclipse.
Am I the moon?

I am the owl
Sighing into the breeze with a long, aged heaviness.
Do you know how many lives I’ve lived?
I exist beyond illusion. Wait for me on the other side.
Tree limbs like train stations. Infinite platforms.
Am I the owl?

I am the farmhouse
Staring into the cul-de-sac with calm, focused intent.
Memories of nothing and pictures of no one come very strangely to mind.
I miss standing here alone. I miss the apathetic.
I used to feel only me.
Am I the farmhouse?

I am the wooden spoon
Stirring the *** filled with ancestor’s palates.
An unforgivable connection found deep in salt and simmer,
I taste a feeling I cannot find in another.
I wonder if I could hold a house together.
Am I the wooden spoon?

she cried on a day that should have been celebratory
and I did not have words

she danced an ode written to cumbia
she danced it out with grace
with verbs so fine  
you knew she held the present
at every sway
she did not have words

we walked to food joint next to the bar
rolled out the English language
in exchange for sustenance
“what are words?”

I picked up our food
drunkenly shook out some lingo
and the grey-haired man on the other side of the counter
took a deep breath and stayed silent
“Are words needed ?”

the Kamikaze shots and the tequila made our tongues soft
and our upper palates dry
pouring only thirst, into our youth  

and there,
eyes soaked in meaning
in a circus of incertitude,
the cold wind turned divine flurried our hair

*“we do not have words.”

my husband, my lover
the man i hold dear...
you know the one
the sports zombie
who dress's so fine.

sauntered out to the back
deck and asked
"beer or wine"
as he is the chef of,
this evenings decline.

now, here is the conundrum
that often,plagues my mind.
wine, tonight, is not really, my palates delight
but beer, tho tasty and thirst quenching,
expands my quarters hind
and leads to wrenching and
writhing in midweek training or at least coniving
of how to be released from
exercise captivity

which way to go,
a cheeky pinot griggio
or a robust boutique beer.
which way, crisp chardonay
or mango ,belgium wheat,
micro-brewed  pilsner.

oh, for the days
of the cask or the
slab of vic bitter.
when the biggest
problem was how
to drink fast enough,
to gather a blast.

the man mountain,
has become impatient.

....now i need to
make a decision.

so,with a women's precision,
i state with a smile,
wide and then wider.
"i'll have one of those
apple-pear ciders"

Twilight envelops my being
As I gaze upon this banquet.
A banquet to tempt
the strongest of wills.
Philosophers think about it
poets pen poetic verses.
A canvas of impeccable beauty
to satisfy the most
finicky of palates
Therapy for the mind,
like a sanctuary of soft
gentle music to
replenish the spirit,
calm, soothe the soul.
Humbled by all this,
I feel blessed to have
been awarded this
loving garden to enjoy.
I am humbled by
this awesome
majestic kingdom.
Mountain ranges loom large
above the horizon
some with tops of white
snow capped crowns.
Moonlight now replaces
the reddish sunset.
I rise from where
I have knelt in homage.
For I have seen the
beauty of heavens gate.
this blessing I
shall never forsake.

'Pets and Palates'

he had only two real loves
ducks and waffles
this was highly disconcerting
to his parents
who tried to distance their boy
from these strange affectations
by buying him a precious pet goose
named Berchunice
and putting him on a steady diet
of pancakes
and their various
international counterparts
needless to say
he didn't live to a great age
as a matter of fact
he died at twenty-two and a smidge
because while pets generally extend and enrich life
caring for a goose you despise
and dining on starchy carbs
seriously inhibits life expectancy

his passing was terribly unfortunate
as was the life his parents had forced upon him
if they hadn't forced these changes on him
had they merely accepted
perhaps
encouraged even
this love of ducks and waffles
their lovely lad
would have
efficiently and economically
solved global warming
in an effort to protect
the best interest
of his friends
the ducks
and in his downtime
he would have put
a major dent
in the world hunger problem
with a highly adaptable
waffle recipe
too bad.

An architect of tile and stone,
mosaic played beautifully in natural colors of desert hues and corresponding twists of evergreens,
Super-heated heavy iron,
along sparks of arc that weld the mind to something infinite yet sublime,
Pastels,
blurring lines of what is real from what is seen,
on canvas unrealized,
Sculptured earthy clay resembling remembrances of more than simple glimpses set in stone,
Artistry of gastronomy,
purging old ideas and new-found taste to tease the discriminating palates of those inclined,
Poets reading widows tears in pouring rain,
outside well-lighted and closed laundro-mats in frigid airy nights,
Waiting to be heard and yet unrecognized in blue-grey hoodies,
Svelte voices and incantations that long for listening ears,
Writers writing about journeys and destinations,
each mile travelled and another respite upon their road, 'Poets, preists and politicians...their words are their ambitions',
Maybe someday there will arise,
a scientist,
that will surmise,
'All is one and one is all',
Then the bleats will not go unheard.

Thus heav'nward all things tend. For all were once
Perfect, and all must be at length restor'd.
So God has greatly purpos'd; who would else
In his dishonour'd works himself endure
Dishonour, and be wrong'd without redress.
Haste then, and wheel away a shatter'd world,
Ye slow-revolving seasons! We would see
(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world that does not dread and hate his laws,
And suffer for its crime: would learn how fair
The creature is that God pronounces good,
How pleasant in itself what pleases him.
Here ev'ry drop of honey hides a sting;
Worms wind themselves into our sweetest flow'rs,
And ev'n the joy, that haply some poor heart
Derives from heav'n, pure as the fountain is,
Is sully'd in the stream; taking a taint
From touch of human lips, at best impure.
Oh for a world in principle as chaste
As this is gross and selfish! over which
Custom and prejudice shall bear no sway,
That govern all things here, should'ring aside
The meek and modest truth, and forcing her
To seek a refuge from the tongue of strife
In nooks obscure, far from the ways of men;
Where violence shall never lift the sword,
Nor cunning justify the proud man's wrong,
Leaving the poor no remedy but tears;
Where he that fills an office shall esteem
The occasion it presents of doing good
More than the perquisite; where law shall speak
Seldom, and never but as wisdom prompts,
And equity; not jealous more to guard
A worthless form, than to decide aright;
Where fashion shall not sanctify abuse,
Nor smooth good-breeding (supplemental grace)
With lean performance ape the work of love....


He is the happy man, whose life ev'n now
Shows somewhat of that happier life to come:
Who, doom'd to an obscure but tranquil state,
Is pleas'd with it, and, were he free to choose,
Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the fruit
Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith,
Prepare for happiness; bespeak him one
Content indeed to sojourn while he must
Below the skies, but having there his home.
The world o'eriooks him in her busy search
Of objects more illustrious in her view;
And occupied as earnestly as she,
Though more sublimely, he o'erlooks the world.
She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them not;
He seeks not hers, for he has prov'd them vain.
He cannot skim the ground like summer birds
Pursuing gilded flies, and such he deems
Her honours, her emoluments, her joys.
Therefore in contemplation is his bliss,
Whose pow'r is such, that whom she lifts from earth
She makes familiar with a heav'n unseen,
And shows him glories yet to be reveal'd....


So life glides smoothly and by stealth away,
More golden than that age of fabled gold
Renown'd in ancient song; not vex'd with care
Or stain'd with guilt, beneficent, approv'd
Of God and man, and peaceful in its end.
So glide my life away! and so at last
My share of duties decently fulfill'd,
May some disease, not tardy to perform
Its destin'd office, yet with gentle stroke,
Dismiss me weary to a safe retreat,
Beneath a turf that I have often trod.
It shall not grieve me, then, that once, when call'd
To dress a sofa with the flow'rs of verse,
I play'd awhile, obedient to the fair,
With that light task; but soon, to please her more,
Whom flow'rs alone I knew would little please,
Let fall th' unfinish'd wreath, and rov'd for fruit;
Rov'd far, and gather'd much: some harsh, 'tis true,
Pick'd from the thorns and briars of reproof,
But wholesome, well digested; grateful some
To palates that can taste immortal truth,
Insipid else, and sure to be despis'd.
But all is in his hand whose praise I seek.
In vain the poet sings, and the world hears,
If he regard not, though divine the theme.
'Tis not in artful measures, in the chime
And idle tinkling of a minstrel's lyre,
To charm his ear whose eye is on the heart;
Whose frown can disappoint the proudest strain,
Whose approbation--prosper ev'n mine.

dissonant is what it was.

that foreverness of din.
criminal—
  aloft, eluding some captive way
    of emphasis.

  scraps of papers fold
and truth is rarefied. hammered
for its malleability is its common trait.

truth and always its never ever.
the men mumble words as if
  oceans whirl in their palates.
the women hide their thighs
  and think of fornications.
the children learn to pilfer
      stray coins in the keep.

dissonance is what it still is.

there's a slow moon over the aubade
     over the culled garden.
     over the cloverleaf curve
    in Balintawak. over no trove of truce.
  caterwauling noises flailing
      belch of automaton metal. mendaciloquent glower of lampposts
    to die early, abandoning EDSA—
we cannot name figures any longer
    of the same axiom, equation,
    salt, crossovers.

Thus heav'nward all things tend. For all were once
Perfect, and all must be at length restor'd.
So God has greatly purpos'd; who would else
In his dishonour'd works himself endure
Dishonour, and be wrong'd without redress.
Haste then, and wheel away a shatter'd world,
Ye slow-revolving seasons! We would see
(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world that does not dread and hate his laws,
And suffer for its crime: would learn how fair
The creature is that God pronounces good,
How pleasant in itself what pleases him.
Here ev'ry drop of honey hides a sting;
Worms wind themselves into our sweetest flow'rs,
And ev'n the joy, that haply some poor heart
Derives from heav'n, pure as the fountain is,
Is sully'd in the stream; taking a taint
From touch of human lips, at best impure.
Oh for a world in principle as chaste
As this is gross and selfish! over which
Custom and prejudice shall bear no sway,
That govern all things here, should'ring aside
The meek and modest truth, and forcing her
To seek a refuge from the tongue of strife
In nooks obscure, far from the ways of men;
Where violence shall never lift the sword,
Nor cunning justify the proud man's wrong,
Leaving the poor no remedy but tears;
Where he that fills an office shall esteem
The occasion it presents of doing good
More than the perquisite; where law shall speak
Seldom, and never but as wisdom prompts,
And equity; not jealous more to guard
A worthless form, than to decide aright;
Where fashion shall not sanctify abuse,
Nor smooth good-breeding (supplemental grace)

...

He is the happy man, whose life ev'n now
Shows somewhat of that happier life to come:
Who, doom'd to an obscure but tranquil state,
Is pleas'd with it, and, were he free to choose,
Would make his fate his choice; whom peace, the fruit
Of virtue, and whom virtue, fruit of faith,
Prepare for happiness; bespeak him one
Content indeed to sojourn while he must
Below the skies, but having there his home.
The world o'eriooks him in her busy search
Of objects more illustrious in her view;
And occupied as earnestly as she,
Though more sublimely, he o'erlooks the world.
She scorns his pleasures, for she knows them not;
He seeks not hers, for he has prov'd them vain.
He cannot skim the ground like summer birds
Pursuing gilded flies, and such he deems
Her honours, her emoluments, her joys.
Therefore in contemplation is his bliss,
Whose pow'r is such, that whom she lifts from earth
She makes familiar with a heav'n unseen,
And shows him glories yet to be reveal'd.

...

So life glides smoothly and by stealth away,
More golden than that age of fabled gold
Renown'd in ancient song; not vex'd with care
Or stain'd with guilt, beneficent, approv'd
Of God and man, and peaceful in its end.
So glide my life away! and so at last
My share of duties decently fulfill'd,
May some disease, not tardy to perform
Its destin'd office, yet with gentle stroke,
Dismiss me weary to a safe retreat,
Beneath a turf that I have often trod.
It shall not grieve me, then, that once, when call'd
To dress a sofa with the flow'rs of verse,
With that light task; but soon, to please her more,
Whom flow'rs alone I knew would little please,
Let fall th' unfinish'd wreath, and rov'd for fruit;
Rov'd far, and gather'd much: some harsh, 'tis true,
Pick'd from the thorns and briars of reproof,
But wholesome, well digested; grateful some
To palates that can taste immortal truth,
Insipid else, and sure to be despis'd.
But all is in his hand whose praise I seek.
In vain the poet sings, and the world hears,
If he regard not, though divine the theme.
'Tis not in artful measures, in the chime
And idle tinkling of a minstrel's lyre,
To charm his ear whose eye is on the heart;
Whose frown can disappoint the proudest strain,
Whose approbation--prosper ev'n mine.

I have mistaken you, for the great wielder of language, that in the times of Caesar my father, my hero, the castle builder in mid-century medieval Spain, he was not. Painting mustard seeds and his mistake, bulbs of garlic for warding off the blood-suckers, I don't think it was his intention, but he could paint potatoes the flavor of want my sister and I so craved when she and I and him, revering in our trident throng forged language before a fading Tuesday night.

A painter is great rarely, but occurs in small, adequate attic-like spaces, empty squares upon squares, readied for the taking of language. Art might be the purveyor of its own bright useless entity, bright ripened similes squeezed out of the Dutch into the Latin vernacular our father failed to remember while poking him at midnight to rile him up to bed.

It was a mistake, the one my Godfather made when he started studying French with himself. No ranking professor can rank himself into his own pedagogy. Language might have lost its roots, maybe it even lost its qualities of being official.

"This is the office of the president."
"The President of the United States?"
"No, the president of the DISH Network."

This is for me, not any president I serve. You could have learnedly observed the words my father would spell to me, each individual vowel and consonant given their own power. However, not my mother or sister could undertake with adequate prowess the tenant of speaking as such, and their tongues suffered as their palates poorly undertook their flustered attempts to enter our philocalist resolve for Caesarian language.

Sadly now, as I think of reading. I think of your fingers and what you must certainly claim to be such grandiose proficiency, your digits and dactyls bring a melancholy hoop of unpleasantries to my eyes. Your mistake has been writing as you speak, and speaking as the free-style spoken-word "artists" attempt to do, in a horrifically insufficient and inarticulate way. I know your mistake when I open myself to read the Associated Press, listen to what Capitol Hill has to say, even coming down from the end of the bar it is a sick knot of undoing that I so wish any children we have will never be privy to.

Except on this Monday night where we can still commit our lives to one another without becoming the indigestible alphabet that has evolved into a toxin around us. What chance does poetry have if sentences collapse in short-dialogues? What will become of our hands? Will they forget the feeling of a pen or pencil in their grip? Certainly, those short notes and scribbles of cursive my mother left for my father, sister, and I will take themselves into antiquity with cuneiform and chalk, whether in Spain, The States, or another place, they have stormed out world with writing and grammar mistakes. He who must pretend to be understood by taking up the thesaurus to talk, will never have the qualities necessary to write without totally ******* it up.

I wrapped my lips
around your neck

Drank you down
kept palates wet

You left marks
I know just what
you meant

Bottoms up
     choke the message down
Little girl
     Do you wanna tear each other apart?
****** set
     fire to my *****

Heart shaped x-ray glasses
Now reality is the new *** tape
We're all framed in

Oh,
The transgressions you keep rewinding
Because fantasies just slow you down
Oh,
When you wanna keep moving
find grace in what you're doing
Oh,
The progressions the soul makes
when it follows the
heart beaten
path
Oh,
Can you even last?
I know
sometimes
I can't

I just wanna get off one time
     and not apologize
For spilling my guts
     trying to center
Your settled half-emptied glass
When all you needed was a refill.

THE GREAT COUNTRY

Silent I wanted to remain,
Alas, my speakfire cry, it cry:
'I will speak and speak, speak of that great
Country,
that great country, with Aries of wits,
On the street of futility.
Speak of that great country, that great
Country with honeys, but honeys for
few palates, but sour for much lips.
Speak of that great country, that great
country that gives benevolently, but
lacks what it gives greatly.'
I besieged my speakfire to calm, alas,
it cry again to weep more. 'Speak on,
speak on' then l said.
Speak of that great country, that great
country that suffered from its Alan
Cortex and Francisco Pizarro, and after
their exist, suffers from self-conqurer.
Speak of that great country, that great
country, with 'giant' as its acronym, but
fortunately unfortunate, an acronym
that fit not.
Speak of that great county, that great
country that gives you oromodiye, and in
return takes odidi omo.
Speak of that great country, that great
country, in its extrinsic, is goodly bad, and
in its intrinsic, looks best worse.
Speak of that great country, that great
country, though having many, but
wallows in penury.
My speakfire speaks of that great
country, my great country.

Oromodiye -- A chick
Odidi omo -- An human.

          E-mail= 89ogunleye@gmail.com.

To the nights,
we watched stars bring life
to the darkness,
like blood through the veins of the Universe.
Where we sat
became the place to be,
on the sea of condensation.
Our glasses half full
our stomachs half empty
and our palates,
well adjusted to the flavor
of a moment in the making.

You could hear the distance
                         between breaths
as our hearts beat
like tides,
crashing upon the horizon.
feel the currents of the words we spoke
in silence...
For hours on end.

But that's how things were supposed to be.

Then!
Then, was a twinkle in the distance.
A smile in a shooting star,
pointing out that the lines of constellations
intersect with every crevasse
in the palms of our hands.
Then! we found the true meaning
in a sunrise.

touch me,
terribly
the way the bed bugs do.
through wiry holes in the springs. crawling.
mechanically.

go down like the sun, still hot
bothered
gnat bites in the armpits of the knees.
closer, closer they crawl towards
skinned palates

Why something rather than nothing,
millenary questions mankind dwell
upon whilst witnessing existence
of surroundings, mesmerising

phenomena. Enthralling vibrations
we sense, sparkling myriad colours,
sounds, shaping textures emitting scents,
flavours tingling baffled palates.

Wandering on metamorphosing soils
ceaselessly reflourishing in springs,
celebrated by pagans and mystic believers
the same, for the goddess we call nature is

the only revealing
itself before us with no veils.

Bathing in fresh waters, rivers
streaming from icy mountain tops
to endless oceans of white
salty minerals balancing life,

in the depths of which all began,
cells melding to engender species
of omnific varieties, beguiling entities
curiously exiting to wander lands.

Juicy fruits on branches of rising trees
erecting to shield, shading creatures
from the scorching rays of a brilliant
star, circadian dawning consenting

earthly presence to evolve, for eyes
to rise contemplating space, in time,
notice the sparkling lights
on infinite black canvas, wonder

what they are, mirific excitement
while perceiving a unique
peculiar consciousness encompassing
all that ever was is and will be,

for intuition to question in beguile,
Why something rather than nothing?

palates and platelets
pallets and plates

mind and matter
brain and body

float me down the river
with the sun far from falling

---

desert fog
shiphorns blow in the distance

melting tundra
poke holes in the old maps

winds that blow between your toes
and stir undying shivers into quiet pines

The perhaps freaky thing is from the first occasion to the last, the affair leaves me disillusioned.


(sonnet #MMMMMMCCCCLXXXIIII)


They pulled shots on more fancy presses' scale
Of lo, espresso, than we know, tae thence
Pass 'round the little porc'lain mug for sense
And comment.  Bells and whistles to avail
Whomever of sheer grandeur was't? would hail
Their newr machines as ultmate for intents,
Dad sez.  And we rolled 'cross our tongues th'intense
Black tazos, sip by sip, til such'd wax stale.
Fire up the grill, next:  play the epicure,
As now mein host two diffrent cuts put to
Our palates and good taste.  Wine to assure
Souls twas the height of whocareswhat, we knew
Such conversations, laughter, and for sure:
Philosphy.  Problem's:  I can't think what's new.

08Jul17b

was the sort of kid who would have enjoyed dissection
in high school, savoring in the permission to cut
a once-living creature open and scrutinizing the
parts that made it function,

would draw swastikas on furniture and his toys and his
body not because he was an Anti-Semite but
because he thought that maybe it could start
a conversation or two,

mixed different sorts of alcohol in his bedroom and claimed
to have brewed them himself because he
thought he could impress the friends whose
palates discerned the lie,

wore heavy black clothing even in the drought of August
or red-colored contacts and a black eye
eye patch because he thought this made
him intimidating,

carried an immense duffel bag packed so tightly with
dull-edged katanas and worn flasks
and umpteen lighters and extra shoes
it could not be fastened,

always smoked two cigarettes in succession as if
to say to everyone: smoking is
cool and now I am twice as cool
as the rest of you,

was so captivated by explosions that he poured
drain cleaner into bottles filled with *****
of tin foil and claimed to be creating a
recipe for ******,

did not believe in moderation and always ate until
his gut distended or drank until his pallid
skin greened or smoked until the bag was
empty and the room a thick haze,

never cared that his name was simply Rob and his
ever-changing group of friends insisted
upon adding the ‘Crazy’ since he had been young,
never hesitated to share his time or money
or material possessions with every person he knew,
never made apologies for his outlandish and
off-putting behavior because he was comfortable as
himself and was committed to enjoying
every moment of every day with unabashed gusto.